The Electric State

The mall used as the robot safe haven is North DeKalb Mall in North Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. It opened in 1965 and closed in 2020 before being demolished in mid 2024. The mall had previously been used in episodes of Loki and Cobra Kai as well as the Fear Street trilogy and feature films Civil War, The Mule and Zombieland: Double Tap.

Several times throughout the movie, the Marshall drops his gun and the characters never try to grab it and use it against him. The most prominent of these examples are when they manage to temporarily trap the Marshall in a metal claw, and instead of picking up his gun off the floor and shooting his drone, they decide to run, even though shooting the drone would solve the entire problem.

However, it is more than possible (and likely) that the weapon is linked somehow to its robot owner - there have been examples of weapons developed in the past ten years in real life that respond only to an authorised person's fingerprint, for example.

However, there's no evidence for this theory within the film. In addition the above states that examples of such weapons have been developed in the last 10 years (ie, since 2015). The film is set in the 1990s.