OSD 305: Drones are the frontier of the Second Amendment
What should gun rights people have done before 1934? Today is the pre-1934 moment for drones.
We recorded a podcast episode last week with David Han Jr. of Canine Defense Technologies. David’s company makes open-source tactical utility drones “for defense professionals and serious civilians”.
One unique thing about that mission is that for all the defense tech VCs talking about how based they are, mostly the only kind of “defense tech” they’re interested in is the kind that arms the government. What next-generation civilian arms look like is still very nascent.
But there are a few themes that are already emerging:
Just as guns were a step change in the ability to exert force at a distance, so are drones.
Drones are more versatile than guns. Guns are a weapon. Drones can be weapons — but they can also be ISR devices, a communication system, an early warning system, a deterrent, or a platform to perform simple tasks. Drones don’t replace guns, but they do create a multi-layered defense system that completely outmatches someone who is only equipped with firearms.
Drone countermeasures are largely ineffective. It’s a cat-and-mouse game that will reach equilibrium over time, but today offense is way ahead of defense.
Drone networking and autonomy are game changers for personal defense. Your neighbor buying a gun doesn’t really make you more safe. It might, in the indirect sense that it’s good to have neighbors you can rely on when you’re in a jam. But their gun doesn’t directly make your gun more effective. Play out where drone software and AI are going, though, and you can see a world where your drones and your neighbors’ drones work together (largely autonomously) and force-multiply each other.
Drones, radios, and AI are all making each other better, in a tight upward spiral.
Regulation is a stumbling block. FAA rules ban you (if you don’t have a pilot license) from flying a drone beyond visual line of sight. Registration is also required by law, and drones are required to continuously broadcast their id, velocity, and location, as well as the location of their controller. It’s also illegal to fly over people or vehicles. The sum of all of this is a de facto ban on almost all useful civilian applications of drones. That sounds like an overstatement — you can use drones for a bunch of stuff already, right? But it’s really a statement about how vast the opportunity is. As useful as drones are today, that is a rounding error compared to how useful they could be without their mid-20th century legal shackles.
Since the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, the AR-15 has been the symbol of the Second Amendment. But it’s just one particular piece of technology. A snapshot in time.
If you value the Second Amendment, being exclusively focused on firearms today would be like being a Fourth Amendment advocate in 1992, watching the modern internet be born, and saying, “That’s cool but let’s focus on the laws about intercepting USPS first-class mail.”
Drones are a chance to reset the bar for what the Second Amendment means. Opportunities like this only come along once every few decades. Let’s make the most of it.
This week’s links
Jon and Sarah Hauptman of PHLster Holsters on the OSD Podcast
Enjoyed this detailed conversation. Jon and Sarah are two of the industry’s best people at turning CCW comfort from luck (“just buy 10 holsters and see what you like”) into a reproducible science.
“Looking back on millennial gear obsessiveness”
From Speculative Future Gun Culture:
Gear was even more diverse. [My grandfather] had some old, rather primitive looking web gear that I thought was from the Vietnam War era but turned out to be from the 1980s, a couple different chest rigs with pouches in a bewildering array of designs and manufacturers, a few vests, two plate carriers, a late 2030s lightweight rifle armor jacket (I am not sure whether he obtained this years later, or somehow got ahold of it when it was new), all kinds of different camouflage patterns, etc.
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This type of forethought is encouraging to participate in. It seems that second amendment advocates are constantly responding to regulatory encroachment, rather than pushing for new legislation which carves out room for the exercise of 2A rights.
As you mention, airborne drones are tightly regulated, but weakly so. From my limited exposure to the FPV world, I get the impression that the ability to fly and film is not partisan. Imagine if hobby RC was brought to schools or neighborhood parks to give kids something fun and productive to explore. What if volunteer civilian UAS were used in search/rescue? People of all walks love these things, and almost everybody can find a use for one and fly it. Thus, I think a productive way to start on the offensive with legislation is to advocate from a hobby and community improvement stance.
There are several influential hobby drone advocates who would make great leaders on this issue. They can speak to the burdensome restrictions over time, how regulation does not necessarily result in safety, and how hobby RC tech is the start of many helpful technologies. In particular, I'm thinking of Justin at Drone Camps RC. He has been in the DIY drone scene from its early days, and is a second amendment proponent too.
There is a pure 2A argument to be made for the deregulation of drones, and this is really what we're after. Armed drones owned and operated by civilians is a certain deterrent of tyranny, just as our forefathers intended. However, I think it would be more palatable to initially advocate for the rights to fly from a hobby perspective. I've heard more than one drone pilot bummed that drones are being weaponized, because it leads to tighter regulation of civilian craft. We must work hand in hand with tech and cinema-oriented FPV enthusiasts in the fight for deregulation.
What can we do to start? For one, make sure that drones get positive media coverage. Volunteer to do an air show. Do cinema flights for local orgs. Teach kids to build and fly, et cetera. The more hearts and minds drones capture, the easier it will be to carve out regulatory space. A strong 2A argument emerges once they're in common use.