AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS:

Alert thinking folk will be aware that sometimes others can present an occasional threat to them or their families.

Crime and violence DOES happen sometimes .. but it is rare enough to still be headline material.

- Sure there are certain kinds of violence that opinion-makers like to shout about - like GUN CRIME in America. - Our excellent lady Prime Minister is currently saying how she can't understand USA's attitude to private gun ownership .. Jacinda Ardern is campaigning to reduce firearms death rates.

 HAROP LOITERING MUNITION - only 3 Meter Wingspan.

.. BUT it would be rude of me not to point-out that EVERY year since the end of World War II ... for every one of SEVENTY-FOUR years of "peace" there has been more than one million people killed in military conflict - whereas worldwide civilian homicides run at the lesser figure of some 400,000 per year.

(The American Journal of Public Health June 2014 notes that between 85-90% of deaths in war are civilian.)

These are UNITED NATIONS & World Health Organization Recorded Figures: Link Here:

https://ourworldindata.org/homicides 

Logic therefor suggests that possession of weaponry by GOVERNMENT military forces is by far a much greater health issue for their citizens than private sporting and self defense firearms will ever be.

A recent advance in government killing machinery is Lethal Autonomous Weapons .. these are not some future-fear .. but are already in use by governments around the planet. e.g. - Azerbaijan April 5 2016 .. buses of Armenian soldiers destroyed by Harop.

Israel Aerospace Industries Harop & Harpy loitering munitions are small stealth planes that loiter for hours in the air and select their own targets to destroy or return autonomously to their launch site.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAI_Harop

Samsung Sentry.

Stationary sentry guns activated by body heat are already deployed in Korea & Israel where Minister Ayoob Kara stated in 2017 that Israel is developing military robots, including ones as small as flies.
Russia says they are developing autonomous attack submarines .. US admits to 'ghost fleets of ships' while UK has deployed unmanned vehicles and military robots.

- Sure our PM Jacinda is right to be concerned about who is armed with Military Style Semi-Auto "assault rifles" - our own civilian police have got around a thousand of them - but there are other equal or greater threats existing around us - not to mention 'WMD'.

GLADIATOR UGV .. Unmanned Ground Vehicle.

Fancy your chances against one with an AR15?

These are not the crazed inventions of an Evil Dr. No in a James Bond movie .. these are the work of our elected governments & administrations.

That's not our Southern Alps - Surely?

Marty K.