The Only Thing That Stops a Bad Guy With a Drone is a Good Guy With a Gun?

For the latest bit of insanity in our National Security Surveillance State, check the following story out, as reported in this morning's Denver Post and Albuquerque Journal

DEER TRAIL, Colo. (AP) — This tiny plains town an hour east of Denver doesn’t have much to offer visitors — a gas station, a bar and a small-time rodeo one weekend a year.
But Deer Trail, population 500, is considering a proposal to make itself a national attraction for gun enthusiasts and people skeptical of government surveillance. Citizens on Oct. 8 will vote on whether to issue permits to hunt drones.
Yes, those drones. Shoot ‘em down for $25. With a $100 bounty reward for shooters who bring in debris from an unmanned aircraft “known to be owned or operated by the United States federal government.”
The initiative’s architect insists it’s a symbolic stand against government surveillance....

Apparently, Deer Trail hasn't worked on any of the details. Will you need a Federal Drone Stamp on your license since I presume these are a Federal protected species? A three shot plug? Steel shot? Will this be modelled after those coyote killing contests in New Mexico? Does the winner get a free stay in Club Fed?

I coulda benefitted by the County flying one of these little drones as a traffic camera on my ride up NM-4 on Sunday. That's when the guy in the blue convertible came up behind me. He laid on the horn and then passed me well within five feet. But that isn't terrorism, right? Just good old fashioned American intolerance.

"Get Off The Road!"

The Deer Trail proposal is a symbolic (and slightly wacky) but well deserved poke in the eye to the Feds over its ill-regulated and probably unconstitutional surveillance policies. Furthermore, given the public's resistance to traffic cameras, I worry about what may happen if the Feddle Gummint actually starts flying drones over the general public while the public is enjoying what it thinks of as its private space. In other words, rhetorical flak could be replaced by actual flak. That will be especially interesting in some of them Red States that don't trust the Feds anyway. Especially with that socialist, liberal, Kenyan black guy in the White House.

Traffic cameras are far less of an intrusion than Federal drones or Internet spying, IMHO, since both the traffic cameras and you are in plain sight on public space,  Nor do you need a security clearance and access to the Federal star chamber court to find out about them or to find out whether you have a right to privacy on public roads.

But perhaps drones and NSA spying is too esoteric for Americans to worry about. More importantly, have you run a bicyclist off the road lately?

So it goes.