It seems a little like the genie is out of the bottle and won't go back in.
I am concerned at what point drones become armed. Hellfires are not going to happen, but smaller weapons. I suspect the calculation may be, say, finding an active shooter holed up in a house, why risk our troops if we can take out the threat from a distance and angle impossible for people on the ground?
Budget pressures at the county and municipal level are almost always met by curtailing public safety personnel, and more cities are going to run into the choice of bankruptcy or becoming a pension provider instead of being a service provider to citizens.
At some point, it's human nature that some LE official is going to claim he needs armed drones to preserve civil order, there aren't enough people available to manage the task, and not enough money to hire more people.
Of course, a lot of people are figuring out how responsible they are or must be for their own self-defense, and I'd rather go there than have armed drones overhead. There are real limitations on what drones can see, and huge mistakes could be made. A large settlement in a lawsuit may be of little comfort to a false target.
