Tanks are made for confrontation. First designed to crash through trenches and survive machine guns in World War I, the heavy, armored vehicles are machines of headlong destruction. Modern tanks, thick with armor and sporting power cannons, functionally perform the same service: go where the enemy is, and make them gone.
Are guns the answer to drones? This is both a technical and a legal question. It is possible, with great effort (and machine guns) to shoot down small drones, but it's not something people can legally do. In 2013, the Colorado town of Deer Trail debated the sale of drone hunting permits, before deciding against it. In Utah, state representative David E. Lifferth has now proposed a bill that would let law enforcement shoot down drones if they interfere with emergency response.
Yesterday in 1866, the U.S. Army adopted machine guns for the first time. Or, well, almost machine guns: the Gatling gun, first patented in 1862, wasn't fully mechanical. Someone still had to crank it by hand make the gun fire. In an era of warfare remembered for muskets and bayonets, the Gatling gun was a terrifying leap forward.
