Maniac drives tank around neighbourhood scaring neighbours in disturbing footage:
In many parts of the US, it’s commonplace to see people carrying guns in the streets.
But even the unflappable people of Florida draw the line at a tank.
The apparently street-legal armoured vehicle is owned by a man living in the sleepy gated community of Old Cutler Road., in Palmetto Bay, a little way down the coast from Miami.
The shocked residents complaining that the tracked beast that’s been smashing up their kerbs is a “military-style” tank – to avoid any confusion with the perfectly-normal civilian-style tanks we’re all used to seeing on our roads.
Amateur video taken of the vehicle suggests it could be a current FV107 Scimitar or possibly an FV101 Scorpion, a light armoured reconnaissance vehicle that saw service with the British Army through the 70s and 80s.
It looks like the British press has typed up a local (Florida) television station’s minute-long segment on the story. Basically, the television story is some phone footage of the vehicle out on the road, a couple seconds talking about the tank, allegations that it’s destroying curbs (kerbs, as the British say), and a shot of the television report buzzing the intercom of the walled estate asking to talk to someone about the “tank.”
The British tabloid story extends it by calling the driver a “maniac” (unsupported) and identifying the vehicle not as a tank but a British scout vehicle (to women, apparently, all military vehicles with guns look like tanks, which is why when you’re picking you’re Civil War II fantasy team, you should probably leave the anti-armor to the boys, he said, incrementing the variable in the algorithm to his eventual deplatforming with a +1).
I mean, come on now. Let the guy drive his street-legal British scout vehicle in peace.
Here in Missouri, I have seen a number of pieces of post-military equipment out on the roads, generally on the way to an event or parade or perhaps on loan on loan for small-budget local movie shoots.
This is America, [Union] Jack. There’s a rifle behind every blade of grass, and there just might be a privately owned armored vehicle behind every wall.
