Unless a department actually needed the lift capacity however, a Black Hawk would be a waste of money. A smaller chopper would be far cheaper to operate and support.

And I don't know how you can question the militarization of the police. The government is literally giving them surplus military equipment.

I'm happy to report that the second season of Strike Back actually has blank-fire weapons in it rather than airsoft.

Eh, most of the kerfuffle is about giving police MRAPs to replace their wheezy old armoured cars, most of which are obsolete military designs or derivatives of military designs already. Which, let's face it, is a better use for the huge fleet of the things that came back from Iraq and Afghanistan than scrapping them all. And it keeps them maintained (off the DoD's balance sheet, which I'm sure was a factor) while allowing them to be pulled back into service if need be.

It's more of the "military-style" stuff the media is fond of where it's a shorthand for "scary."

You can debate whether or not it's a good thing, but you can't deny that it's happening. I'm happy to see equipment my tax dollars paid for get a second lease on life.

So Belgium's banning loot boxes and Hawaii's brining it up in the US. Bet EA's really happy about their recent decisions :D

It's certainly better than offloading them to some "friendly" Middle Eastern government only for them to be captured by or given to terrorists and used against us.

From what I've heard, there's also a gambling argument behind it. I just hope it doesn't end up making it a crime to pop in GTA San Andreas and gamble away my accumulated in-game dollars in a Las Venturas casino. :(

Gonna assume that's a joke.

I'm glad EA is getting hit with this and I hope this escalate to bans because loot boxes in game that requires you to pay real money to get a random item to artificially make you ahead of the game is bullshit

That's just what I've read on other gaming sites.

I don't see why anyone would care about gambling with fake money, assuming you didn't use real money to buy any.

Pinball machine were banned in many parts of the country for decades, also for gambling reasons. Paddles were added later, and it was successfully argued that it was a game of skill, rather than just chance.

I think the logic behind the gambling thing is just that it "glorifies" gambling. In a kid friendly game like Pokemon I can understand people having an issue with stuff like this, but in a Mature (17+) rated game like GTA that has the player character murdering people and stealing shit, I think the gambling is pretty low down on the "corrupting of the youth" scale.