Axon halts its plan to build Taser-equipped drones for schools
The flying Taser drones would be pre-installed in school ceilings so an officer
could launch one within seconds of a reported shooting, piloting it through special
vents into locked classrooms, stunning the gunman with shock darts
and shouting commands like, “Stay down or you will be hit again.”
That, at least, was the proposal that police-contracting giant Axon championed last week after
the Uvalde school massacre. But the company has since
halted the project following a mass resignation of its own advisers,
who panned it as a crackpot dystopian fantasy that could militarize schools and get children hurt.
The shock drones, they worried, would stun innocent students or be abused by hackers, vandals or the police.