CBS is carrying the story of a new device developed for the Pentagon that has great potential for non-lethal crowd control:
Pentagon officials call it a major breakthrough which could change the rules of war and save huge numbers of lives in Iraq. But it’s still not there. That because in the middle of a war, the military just can’t bring itself to trust a weapon that doesn’t kill.
It’s a gun that doesn’t look anything like a gun: it’s that flat dish antenna which shoots out a 100,000-watt beam at the speed of light, hitting any thing in its path with an intense blast of heat.
It’s a ray gun. At last, my childhood dreams are answered.
Obviously there’s more going on here than military bloodlust blinding the ground forces to a new technology that might save lives. As the article goes on to say, inflicting pain on a crowd of foreigners who have not yet stirred themselves to the sticking point for lethal force can be a fraught decision. Protestors are allowed to get angry – they’re just not allowed to point guns at you.
Still, and speaking as a father of two beautiful teenage daughters in Southern California, if you guys aren’t going to be needing your new crowd control weapon, I could maybe take it off your hands.
My previous (never say old, because that implies old) Skipper had a different philosophy on protecting the fair daughter’s virtue: friends close and enemies even closer. “Oh, we have the boy over all the time…the more time he’s being surveilled by me, the less time he’s working under the cover of darkness…” Of course, hitting him with the TASER as he runs out the front door is a good non-lethal measure, too.
I thought it was the peaceniks that were opposed to our using it. They seem to have fun proving that non-lethal things can occasionally be lethal if the target has health issues….
How about we test it out, real good, on these folks:
http://recreate68.org/album1_dnc_002.htm
I think it would be so cool, you know, to let them… see the light!
I dunno. I think I recall a story about Somalia, or someplace, where the word got out that our guys were gonna use less-than-lethal weapons, if crowded upon.
The locals were just all amazed and giggly about that, having come up in the Third World School of Hard Knocks. People who ain’t skeered o’dyin’ probably aren’t very much scared of pain, either.
It would prolly work just fine against NIU students.
One advantage I think I have from being a bit strange, is the knowlege that other people may not think and react the way I do. Everyone oughta understand that.
Send it to Berkeley. Let the Marines have fun with it and Code Pink. They may change into Hot Pink!
Great idea for the girls. My dad always seemed to have an inkling to clean his guns on the days I was having a suitor over. (He really did this) He also used this application:(http://wilk4.com/humor/humorp3.htm) this one is similar to it. Except in the questions section on my father’s copy where it mentions, “If you check yes to any of these to run” My father’s application specified that you should run in a SERPENTINE fashion. He never did use the application and thankfully so but if he didn’t like someone he would threaten that he was going to give the guy the Application if I didn’t get rid of him on my own! My father had a “weakness” however being a Navy man. Plane talk & Navy talk so I dated a Navy man and the rest was history!
You poor thing Lex. But don’t worry, the Hobbit has it under control…
Shotgun over the front door. It’s worked so far…
Just casually mention that you know people, who know people, who know people that go far out to sea and that these friends wouldn’t notice if something happened to fall off the back of the boat….
Many a string could be strategically pulled if one’s social security number and a passable approximation of a signature were put in the hands of a USMC recruiter…that should be threat enough, microwave ray-gun aside.
~Ens Tim
where’s the kaboom? with a de-modulator like that, there’s supposed to an Earth shattering kaboom!
HT: Marvin
My brother-in-law and I took my 18 year old neice’s boyfriend on a guys day out……………..to the gun range. She’s been home on time from every date and on some occasions even home early.