A gun is a powerful tool for putting a hole in a person. That power made them a staple of armies centuries ago and keeps them on the hips of soldiers, law enforcement, and Gadsden-flag-wearing anybodies to this day. Among the problems of such a lethal tool is that, in the event someone wants to use force but doesn't want to kill anybody, guns are a bad choice. A whole field of less-lethal weapons has sprung up, and one of the latest would use lasers and jets as a less-bloody alternative.
This year, the FBI will start tracking incidents of animal abuse as part of its National Incident-Based Reporting System, with which it tracks other major crimes like arson and assault. This is the culmination of a trend over the past several years in which law enforcement has taken animal cruelty more seriously, as the Washington Post reports. But according to an FBI podcast from last year, law enforcement only started taking animal abuse seriously as a crime when officials demonstrated that animal cruelty can be a harbinger for future violent crime against humans.
A new bill moving through the Massachusetts legislature would limit the way law enforcement can use drones in the Commonwealth. As states struggle to regulate their own drones and those of private citizens, Massachusetts is considering a bill heavy on legal protections from government overreach.
According to NBC News, law enforcement is now saying that the bombs used in the attack on the Boston Marathon were constructed of pressure cookers filled with shrapnel. This is a common and low-rent bomb, typically made from a bit of TNT or other explosive in a sealed pressure cooker. They can be triggered remotely, and the pressure cooker itself turns into shrapnel.
Riots are a tough nut for law enforcement in part because of the sheer number of people involved - it's impossible to stop and arrest every person involved in a skirmish. That's why cops have some pretty high-tech methods for catching suspects, from facial recognition software to debilitating sonic cannons. But none is as bizarre as this new DNA gun from a UK security firm.
Salon's interesting takeaway from last week's big reveal of the Federal Aviation Administration's list of certified drone operators cleared to fly unmanned aerial systems in US airspace: the biggest drone users in the US aren't law enforcement agencies, but universities. Twenty-five academic institutions have received certificates of authorisation (COAs), making up nearly half of the 60 entities with permission to fly unmanned systems.
