Because they have the equipment and are always looking for an excuse to use it to justify the cost and training. And because the more they use it, the sooner they can get more of it.

It makes zero sense to a normal person, nor does their justification for needing the equipment in the first place, but once they have it they'll use it any chance they get.

Ever seen Stripes, the '80s action comedy film with Bill Murray and other notables?

There's a scene in it that I think of every time this kind of story crops up, where you have over-equipped and under-educated people who are trained to think that everyone's the enemy, and so prioritise their blood thirst and fear over everything else:

"All I know is I finally get to kill somebody!"

Their actions aren't about right/wrong or just/unjust, but that they were let off the leash to do what they have been conditioned to do.

So you get people calling in hoaxes to police forces who send militarised forces to raid grannies, young children, whomever. It's about the drama and lulz. Objectively horrifying.

The US has lived in a state where any measure to squash terrorism would never be enough, for a long time. All you have to know is an address and say to the police that you heard a group of Arab looking middle aged men speaking of blowing up a place and a small army would be raised ready raze that domicile to the ground if necessary.

That's what happens when a group of people is armed beyond reason and in constant paranoia.

Oh no i meant the swatting part my bad.

Grandma could have died...

Damn, it did make the news after all.

Why do you think that? Do they mention some kind of payout in the video? It sounds unlikely to me.

It would indeed be a more sensible approach.

I'm frequently amazed that despite your countries declining standard of living it is still light years ahead of that of my own. I'm actually jealous. Please rejoin the EU as soon as it's convenient.

I will never forgive Uvalde police for that school shooting situation. Not only did they do nothing to stop the shooter, they actively held back parents who were going to do the cops jobs for them.

If I remember right, 23 kids, and 3 staff members died that day in an attack that took hours, but should have been stopped in minutes. They arrived on the scene 6 minutes after being called. Then they let it go on and on and on.

I will never forgive Uvalde police.

There are a lot of things that can be pointed at as to why this happens so much in the US. But I think most people forget that this is a problem that can literally be fixed using laws and technology.

Swatting can only happen because the US telecom system is so full of holes and because the US legal system isn't doing its job.

The primary thing you have to do is fix it so that the emergency operators can know where a call actually originated. And all we need to do to make that happen is to change the law so that telecom companies are held criminally and civilly liable when a person uses their infrastructure to fake where an emergency call is coming from.

Calls that come from foreign sources or from internet sources would harbor great suspicion. Imagine that the operator gets a big flashing notice that the call is suspicious right from the start.

I'm not saying that police and gun nuts and police gun nuts and incompetent police and nazi assholes don't have a lot of culpability, or that we shouldn't have severe penalties for people who do the swatting but the core fault lies in our elected representatives being too corrupt to hold telecom companies to account.