Drones armed with pepper spray could guard Texas schools

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas public schools could be guarded by drones armed with pepper spray or Tasers under a new bill filed in the Texas Legislature meant to beef up school security. The measure would boost funding for safety upgrades and let schools deploy drones in place of the armed guards that lawmakers required on every campus in response to the Uvalde school shooting. Districts have said they don’t have the money to make those hires, and Hearst Newspaper previously found many haven’t complied or have instead armed teachers. Rep. Ryan Guillen, a Rio Grande City Republican who filed the legislation, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The bill will be taken up in the legislative session that begins in January. Defense and security companies have promoted drones as a possible solution for stopping or mitigating school shootings in recent years, though school safety experts question the efficacy. At least one Texas company appears to be interested in marketing drones for schools.

In an online job posting, Mithril Defense said it was planning to launch an advocacy campaign aimed at getting state lawmakers to greenlight and fund the use of drones to stop school shootings. The defense company, founded last year, said it expects to pilot the technology “in several top 10 Texas school districts” starting in January but did not identify them by name. The CEO, Justin Marston, said in an email that the company is still formulating its plans and would not have more to share until sometime early next year. Employees for the company, which appears to be named after a magical silver-colored metal from “Lord of the Rings,” are said to include “a former Navy SEAL team SIX Command Master Chief, a serial tech entrepreneur, the #1 American drone pilot on ESPN, and various technical teams.” State ethics filings show they’ve employed former Texas Secretary of State David Whitley as a lobbyist, who previously served as a top aide to Gov. Greg Abbott, and the job posting says the company is also “considering forming a PAC to support the initiative.” Guillen’s bill says the drones would be armed with “less lethal interdiction capability by means of air-based irritant delivery or other mechanisms,” and it would require one drone for every 200 students. The bill would also increase the state’s funding for school safety tenfold — raising the allotment from $10 per-student to $100. Schools could spend that money on school safety expenses, including hardening their campuses, hiring security guards or starting a drone program.