Connecticut may allow police to put lethal weapons on drones

(Image credit: TAUSEEF MUSTAFA/AFP/Getty Images)

published 31 March 2017

The Connecticut state legislature is considering a bill that, if passed, would make the state the first in the country to permit police to use drones armed with deadly weapons. The proposed legislation would also ban weaponized drones for non-police use.

Civil liberties advocates raised immediate concerns about whether lethal, airborne weaponry is appropriate for local policing, citing the risk of misuse. "We're not in warfare here," said David McGuire of the Connecticut ACLU. Drones foster "a level of separation that makes it almost video game like where [police are] detached from the actual situation," McGuire added, expressing concern that the psychological distance a drone creates would lower the bar for officers to engage in use of force.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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