As the death toll from U.S. drone strikes overseas rises and the launch date for 30,000 domestic drones draws nearer, some citizens are deciding to launch their own preemptive strike.

In a rural town about an hour east of Denver, Colorado, the town council is considering issuing licenses to residents to shoot down drones.

A tie vote on the matter held Tuesday night by the town board pushed the final decision off until November. Should the ordinance be approved, residents of Deer Trail, Colorado, could purchase a drone hunting license for $25. Then, if a licensee happens to take one down, he can bring in the wreckage for a $100 reward.

It’s not potential deaths by drone-fired missiles that prompted Deer Trail resident Phillip Steel to draft the unusual proposal, however. Steel says the measure is a “symbolic” act of resistance to the increasingly invasive surveillance activities of the federal government.

“I don’t want to live in a surveillance society. I don’t feel like being in a virtual prison,” he added.

Many of his neighbors agree. The Washington Times reports: Some Deer Trail officials and residents — along with many others across the nation — fear that the rapid rise of domestic drones poses grave new threats to personal privacy. Echoing the concerns of privacy groups, civil liberties activists and many state and federal lawmakers, those pushing the Deer Trail ordinance argue that citizens must resist the unprecedented surveillance capabilities brought by drones.

As one would expect, the opponents are lining up to take shots at Steel’s idea. “Generally our view is that it is a relatively reckless and irresponsible proposition,” Benjamin Miller, unmanned aircraft program manager at the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado, according to a report filed by NBC News.

Also quoted in the NBC News story is Ryan Calo, assistant professor of law at the University of Washington. Calo calls the ordinance and the town council’s close vote a “cowboy instinct.” “It’s showmanship — it’s just all flash,” he told NBC.

As with nearly every other decision taken by state and local authorities, the federal government has decided to chime in and assert its “supremacy.”

NBC News reports that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has “issued a statement warning about the legal implications of harming an aircraft, as well as the safety considerations of a crashing chunk of metal.”

“Shooting at an unmanned aircraft could result in criminal or civil liability, just as would firing at a manned airplane,” the FAA statement e-mailed to NBC News claims. The Washington Times quotes an additional portion of the statement that claimed a drone “hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air.”

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