Laser Painting Could Lead to 25-Year Prison Term

lowy writes "According to this USA Today article, a New Jersey man was charged under federal anti-terrorism laws with shining a laser beam at a jet flying over his home. The Feds arrested him after he flashed a police helicopter searching for the source of the beam. He now faces up to 25 years in prison under Patriot Act charges." It seems to be happening around the country, as our earlier post makes clear.

Comments

Re:Only 25 years?

[acidrain69]

First of all, you can't assume he watches the news. It is every citizens responsibility to be aware of the laws (which is arguably impossible, but I digress).

Second, it is not proven wether people are trying to "take down planes" by blinding the pilots. Until you produce some kind of evidence, it is not proven. There are idiots out there that will just hear something on TV about this and just play around with a pocket laser because they are stupid. I call these people "dumb rednecks". And then there are people out there who are actually trying to take down planes, possibly using lasers to distract/blind the pilots. I call these people "terrorists". Terrorists don't care about the 25 year sentence. Terrorists don't even care if you kill them in the process, if they have made the decision to give their own life to their cause. They don't care about our laws, and trying to scare them by making an example of someone does nothing.

There are no laws forcing stupid people not to reproduce, unfortunately. There would be no Bush daughters, that is a bad thing depending on how you look at it. "Safer to the general public" is a very subjective point of view. We don't lock up senior citizens because they are shitty drivers. We don't lock up kids because they don't know better and do stupid shit. Well, sometimes we do.