Posted on 05/29/2013 4:01:31 AM PDT by Reaganite Republican
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Bookmark.
As long as its circulating over Waziristan (and armed), I don’t have a problem with it.
As much as I want to agree with you on principle, Bob, I disagree with the idea that “as long as it’s not in my backyard, it’s okay.” Tin horn dictators like Obama don’t give a flying crap about your concerns. Local sheriffs, by extension, often don’t give a rip about your rights, unless, of course, they’re called out for violating them. Give one of these things to Obama, and I’m sure he already has an entire fleet of them at his disposal, or worse, give a couple of them to your local sheriff, outfit them with thermal optics, they can fly it over your house in the middle of the night and make sure you’re sleeping soundly in your bed.
Oh sure, they’ll get on TV and try to assuage your concerns: “We’re flying overhead for YOUR safety. We’re using thermal optics to find growhouses in your local area.” And you think, “Oh, well I’m not a growhouse, so I’m safe.”
What makes you think that if the shit hits the fan in the next few years that these sheriffs won’t deploy these devices, armed with tactical munitions, to fly over your bunker or your home to find where you’re hiding and rip you out by force with the SWAT team? During Katrina, people were forcibly ripped from their homes by the National Guard despite being miles away from the seriously damaged parts of NOLA. If they didn’t answer their doors, the troops would’ve moved on. If they did answer their doors, they were forced out at gunpoint “for their safety.”
Now fast forward, pick your disaster, Federal troops (FEMA/DHS) are going door-to-door ordering you out of your home despite your home being outfitted with months of survival gear and supplies. They fly one of these drones over your neighborhood using thermal optics to find the warm bodies in the houses. This time they don’t knock and move on if you don’t answer. They knock, give you a chance to answer, then, on the orders from their superiors in cushy RVs a few hundred miles away, break down your door knowing that you’re in there thanks to the drones.
I’m not a fan of this drone shit. I’ve been flying RC planes for years, and I’ve outfitted some of them with cameras and the like; but I have no intent outside of entertainment. You put unmanned, armed jets in the air, you give the owner of that device unlimited knowledge of your whereabouts. In tactical circles, this is the end game. There’s little you can do if they can restrict your movements or otherwise know what you’re doing and where you’re going.
To boot, these devices are being flown by kids in a bunker somewhere who grew up playing video games and are generally immune to the idea of killing an actual human being. They killed more than their fair share of enemy combatants in games like Medal of Honor and Battlefield, and when they were killed in battle, they simply waited 10 seconds and re-spawned somewhere on the map. Problem is, we don’t re-spawn in real life.
Our efforts can be productive primarily thorough developing defenses, house shielding, perhaps, and the like. Some effort should go into "banning" these devices, I suppose, but that would only make direct use of evidence derived inadmissible in the courts. That is only a little useful so long as the government abides by the Constitution and the Law. How likely now is that in a disaster or with politicians running things?
Does it not strike you as ominous and outright wrong to fear your government in such a way? It’s run up to the point that Americans are prisoners in their country to a government that USED TO represent them. Now they’re just slapped into place like mayo on a sandwich and expected not to be bad or otherwise cause discomfort, distaste, or disaster.
Furthermore, this is the sort of shit for which the Second Amendment should stand. When people say, “Oh, you don’t need a tank” or “You don’t need a grenade launcher” or “You don’t need a drone,” they’re really saying, “You’re not competent enough to have [one of those things].” But our government is competent enough? We’re not permitted to have a variety of military armament out of FEAR that we would use it against our government, and God damn right they should be afraid! That’s the way this country was founded.
The fact that these drones are in use doesn’t scare me. It’s the fact that we can’t field our own drone force to combat them when the time comes that the government has become tyrannical; a time that I would argue has already come and gone.
this would not be the best picture possible. we were getting better pictures than this from orbit in the 80s
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