The company behind the sometimes controversial Taser guns has unveiled a plan to place its technology in a “non-lethal, remotely-operated TASER” drones in a bid to “stop mass shootings.”
Axon, the Arizona based company behind the Taser, announced its plan in a press release yesterday.
The drone system was explicitly announced as a bid to end mass shootings after the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas that saw 19 children killed by a lone gunman as police waited outside a barricaded door. State authorities said local officials were wrong not to act faster.
“Today, the only viable response to a mass shooter is another person with a gun,” said Axon CEO and founder Rick Smith. “In the aftermath of these events, we get stuck in fruitless debates. We need new and better solutions.”
Axon / PRNewsWire
That solution, according to Smith, is to arm drones with Tasers as part of a strategy that includes “camera networks and other sensors” combined with “Virtual Reality Active Shooter Response Training” for law enforcement.
Axon’s own ethics board voiced its opposition to the plan, and outside ethics groups are already announcing their opposition to Smith’s Taser-armed drones.
“Axon Must Not Arm Drones with Tasers”, declared the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a response published today.
“EFF has stated strongly before that drones and robots,” the organization wrote, “should not be armed–either with lethal or ‘less-lethal’ weapons. And we’re far from the only group to do so.”
The organization warned that police may be more willing to use unnecessary force “if the entire process feels like a video game” where officers watch live video sent back from drones to remote monitors where they “send tens of thousands of volts through a person’s body with the push of a button”.
Still, Smith stressed that he believes the drone will make communities safer.
Axon founder Rick Smith
“To make the future different than the past, we must try new approaches. I believe that a remotely operated, non-lethal drone is far safer than sending an armed human being into a volatile setting,” he concluded.
“I also realize this is a transformative change, and I am committed to listening to concerns and feedback over the next several years as we move through development.”
