[hga]

"In a civilized society, we outsource our violence to police and other agencies...."

I suspect you'll not be surprised that I strongly disagree. Honest police (I gather most of them, in fact) know they can't be everywhere, e.g. "When seconds count, the police are minutes away." Worse, it's well established in the courts that police have absolutely no duty to protect anyone in particular; the most recent case is particularly stark, on a subway Joseph Lozito subdued a knife wielding assailant taking quite a few injuries while the NYPD officers there cowered and locked themselves away.

Hmmm, have you ever lived in an area where concealed carry is shall issue and self-defense was encouraged by the local authorities? In my home town, which I've retired to, they went so far as to say a woman had an "absolute right" to use lethal force against some home invaders, and the staff of the required concealed carry class I and my father took were all active duty police officers who were entirely supportive of citizen self-defense.

I wonder if your take on drone warfare is a bit off. Haven't followed Afghanistan that closely, but I know during our occupation of Iraq we allowed people to retain an AK-47 for self-defense, "picking up a weapon" was not an automatic mark of an enemy. Context mattered, and I strongly expect does in Afghanistan. Pick up a weapon and move towards an allied unit, likely enemy. Outside of that context, isn't so clear, especially in such an well armed society.

And you at least in part recognize that, "wielding a gun against a uniformed soldier or even a drone effectively marks you as a terrorist", although I'd substitute enemy for "terrorist", and enemy is quite enough to allow for a violent response.

[lukifer]

> have you ever lived in an area where concealed carry is shall issue and self-defense was encouraged by the local authorities?

I have not, I have talked to several Texans for whom this is the case, given that police help was 45 minutes away. It enriched my perspective on gun culture quite a bit.

> I wonder if your take on drone warfare is a bit off.

Yeah, I'll admit that I'm not exactly extrapolating from intimate knowledge of details. And you're right that "enemy combatant" is the term generally used. I do still think that is an imbalance in that is effectively impossible for us to see those combatants as legitimate in the same way as the social construct of "soldier", because they fight for a sect or tribe rather than a nation-state. But then, past wars have often involved pre-emptively describing the enemy as sub-human, so perhaps it's just more of the same, if not a slight improvement.

I'd be very curious to learn if there has been any attempt to "sharp-shoot" or otherwise physically defend against drones. Or do they simply strike from too far away for this to be feasible?

Also, I'd wager ten-to-one that in the next decade, we'll see a Supreme Court ruling on whether personal defense drones are covered by the 2nd amendment.

[hga]

Well, there's the concept of unlawful combatant per the Geneva Convention, which allows most any fate including summary execution on the battlefield. To not be an unlawful combatant is not that difficult, e.g. it requires things like a command structure and identifying clothing on the field, an armband will do. Fighting for a nation-state is not required.

According to Wikipedia, the standard Hellfire II missiles the Predator and Reaper drones use have a long range, 546 yd – 5 mi/500 m – 8 km, although these models can't operate farther than the laser designator can reach. No "sharpshooter", that is individual rifleman shooting a battle rifle cartridge has no practical chance. Maybe someone using a general purpose machine gun or better with plenty of tracer rounds in the belt, but of course that's going to be rather obvious to the operators and invite getting out of range and firing a Hellfire back. Hmmm, looking at heaver USSR/Russian stuff, these drones would be able to easily keep out of range of even the famous ZSU-23-4 4 cannon mobile AA weapon system, SAMs are going to be required.

I don't expect a Supreme Court decision, unless unfavorable, they're very reluctant to take up 2nd amendment cases. E.g. only one 20th Century case in 1939, then Heller in 2008 and *McDonald 2010. Since then I believe they've denied cert to every case that's come to them, although in terms of "clean" cases (e.g. not a criminal trying a Hail Mary appeal he's going to lose) as I recall only a concealed carry one in New York state, despite there being a circuit split with the one covering Illinois. We'll see, but I at least am not that hopeful. They will get more opportunities on concealed carry, e.g. from the circuit covering Maryland, and I think another.