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Police Not Issuing Charges For Handgun-Firing Drone -- Feds Undecided
Mr.Intel sends a followup to last week's news of an 18-year-old man getting a lot of attention for posting a video of a handgun being fired from a drone. Despite calls to arrest the man, police say they can't find any reason to charge him. "It appears to be a case of technology surpassing current legislation," they said. Todd Lawrie, the chief of police where it happened, said, "We are attempting to determine if any laws have been violated at this point. It would seem to the average person, there should be something prohibiting a person from attaching a weapon to a drone. At this point, we can't find anything that's been violated. The legislature in Connecticut (recently) addressed a number of questions with drones, mostly around how law enforcement was going to use drones. It is a gray area, and it's caught the legislature flatfooted." The FAA and other federal agencies are still investigating and trying to figure out if any criminal statutes were violated.
He's got a job waiting at the CIA or DARPA!
It bothers me when I hear of regulatory organizations "investigating" to determine if a law has been broken. If the agency directly responsible for the enforcement of a law cannot immediately decide if an action is illegal how can anyone reasonably expect a regular citizen to know if they are breaking the law?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
I seriously doubt that we have drones stable enough to handle the recoil of a handgun without missing the target by at least a few meters .. The stuff otherwise sounds cool :)
I wonder if it fits into the category of automatic weapon. The hand gun obviously isn't, but if he just has a button to fire it and he can hold the button, then would it count as an automatic weapon? From the perspective of the remote, 1 trigger pull = continuous fire.
he's a terrorist
I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it. -- Calvin
Just because the PR people say words does not make them the most accurate depiction of events occurring. More than likely they are determining if the act meets the tests required by law and if there is reasonable likelihood that a criminal case can be successfully prosecuted. Court cases are expensive - both in money and resources; having the prosecution review a case for potential applicability is SOP.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Welp, now those firefighting helicopters are in REAL trouble
We are attempting to determine if any laws have been violated at this point.
As an american citizen I'm appalled by this statement. This is the land of japanese internment camps and the red scare. We once legally declared a person was 3/5ths a man based on their skin color. Heck, we have a secret prison in another country just to indefinitely punish people for anything we want at all, just because we declared they were an 'enemy combatant.' On a state by state basis we have a dazzling array of local regulations that prohibit everything from dancing to wandering the street with an icecream cone in your pocket. Clearly these officers arent trying hard enough.
Just remember: if you cant find anything to charge them with and they havent broken any laws, chances are good you can just kill them for disagreeing with you and still not be indicted for anything.
Good people go to bed earlier.
He hasn't committed a crime.
If he shoots people or trespasses there's existing law. Flying a hobby project on private land with a gun or a container of fireworks may be ill-advised -- but you don't need to make another law because you feel threatened by the brave/stupid things people choose to do with their life and property.
Just strap some cheap flatwear to the thing and declare ramming speed!
and just make something up to arrest him for? Cops are good at that. Disorderly conduct is vague enough to stick.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
How does the law in the US stand regarding unmanned combat aerial vehicles under the control of civilians?
Definition of a UCAV: a remotely operated or automatic drone equipped with a weapon that is a: guided (camera targetting?) and b: able to be fired remotely.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
He is 18 so?
How does he have a hand gun?
Why is it that "It would seem to the average person, there should be something prohibiting a person from attaching a weapon to a drone." Is there a law preventing me from taping a gun to a car and firing it? To a stick? If not then there's nothing to stop you from doing that on a drone.
Best I can think is that if the "average person" is against people owning handguns, they might think this. My guess is that the "outrage" is from the same people
Probably no laws about this yet. Maybe brandishing a weapon. It all boils down to the pilot/owner of the aircraft is responsible for any and all damage to people and property cause by anything to do with it. if it falls out of the sky and hits someone the pilot is at risk for any damage. Members of the AMA (www.modelaircraft.org) have guidelines that if followed they will insure you against damages inadvertently caused. However, they clearly spell out no guns/projectiles.
Any person handling a gun is responsible for every projectile leaving it. From the time it leaves the gun to the time it is done moving.
Trust in twitchy radio equipment on a trigger of a gun makes my pucker factor about 9.7 (diamonds people diamonds)
He's been doing this for years in Pakistan... it's not too late to extradite that idiot.
When did we switch from, "who did this [obvious] crime?" to "let's figure out what crimes X committed?" The feds know what this guy did. Either it's a crime, or it's not. If it requires a massive amount of digging (by subject matter experts) to try to find some law to charge the guy with, it's not justice. I suspect any one of us could be found guilty of multiple felonies if a team of lawyers were tasked with charging us with something. Having said that, this guy's an idiot for having his name associated with a video containing two hot button issues combined together.
The police and Feds do not want to confirm a ban at this moment as a blanket ban on arming drones might effect themselves, While I know they can make a law for the people and one for themselves it will be much harder to get a police/feds only armed drone law passed the public than simply not banning them for anyone.
>>>We are attempting to determine if any laws have been violated at this point
What happens to first determining if there was any criminal intent or adverse consequences?
... and this is why you should never talk to police. They might just determine that you have been violating something while talking with you.
"It would seem to the average person, there should be something prohibiting a person from attaching a weapon to a drone."
Yet at the same time "average Americans" are emotionally numb and indifferent to the indiscriminate mass killings carried out by weapons attached to their drones flying with impunity in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and in many other parts of the world. Talk about cognitive dissonance at the population-level?
"It appears to be a case of technology surpassing current legislation."
They're intentionally not finding a reason to arrest him and they tell you why right there. They want new laws. This is an underhanded attempt at manipulating the public and I very much suspect it will work if the comments on this story are any indication.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
The gun is legal but his use of the solenoid to depress the trigger may not have been. It may have transformed the "legal handgun" to simply being one component of an NFA automatic-weapon.
So what you are saying... is that when I build my own weaponized drone, I should arm it with a flamethrower instead of a hand gun?
Good to know...
Bullets go far.
"It appears to be a case of technology surpassing current legislation" - well OK, then what about this video, which was uploaded in 2006, and shows a "drone" carrying and firing a weapon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpJF27QQcQ8
There is even a website: www.autocopter.us
That's not cognitive dissonance. On one hand you have a teenager building a flying gun in his backyard in Connecticut. One the other hand you have the U.S. military taking out the bad guys half way across the world. Having two differing opinions on these two situations is not contradictory. Are the situations much more complicated and nuanced than how I described? Sure. But for most people, that's what it boils down to, so their reactions make sense.
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
What about the glorious catch-all "reckless endangerment" or "criminal mischief"? There are myriad ways this scenario could have gone wrong, such as a malfunction resulting in severe injury or death to the owner or a previously-unseen bystander. It's not that I think this type of thing should be outlawed, per se, but when a story such as this hits the internet, I now have to worry about every bored teenager in the sticks trying this out and potentially using no care or consideration for safety whatsoever. If it was a camera or water-balloon dropping device, eh, whatever -- but now we've planted a seed of villainous intent into the minds of people who hadn't thought of it before -- some of those minds can handle the concept, while at least a few won't be satisfied until they've intentionally harmed something with it.
C. Griffin
"Can I keep his head for a souvenir?" --Max from Sam 'N Max Freelance Police
FPS Russia did this already and I put an Walther CP99 air pistol on a 1/8 scale truggy. I used the 3rd channel to power a servo that runs the trigger.
Big deal, but I learned quickly that the same people who drive 2000 pound cars through red lights and don't use their blinkers get very upset at the thought of a .177 lead pellet flying at ground level.
"But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt."
One would think this has come up before. Robots with shotguns have been pushed for law enforcement use for several years, and it would be pretty hard to believe that civlians haven't made them as well. Why does the fact that this one flies make it any different?
"It appears to be a case of technology surpassing current legislation."
They're intentionally not finding a reason to arrest him and they tell you why right there. They want new laws. This is an underhanded attempt at manipulating the public and I very much suspect it will work if the comments on this story are any indication.
Probably right. But from the comments it also does seem that he clearly broke the letter of the law unintentionally. So there is already a law against this. Just because a law is broken, however, doesn't mean that a crime was committed or that charges should be filed. This is an obscure law, at most the ATF should just issue a clarification that this is illegal under existing law.
They actually attach weapons to drones, and kill people with that.
Still nobody thought it would be a nice idea to have any law around this concept, stating that army is ok, police not, and private not at all.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
Only difference is this fool put it on YouTube.
This was already done probably 10 years ago with a large RC Helicopter. And the Helicopter was more stable and accurate than the Quad Copter. This is only a big deal because the media has become hooked on drones and looking for any excuse to demonize them. STFU and move on.
I can't find it right now, but there was a quote from a Supreme Court Justice, I believe it was in the 30s-40s, along the lines of how dangerous it is when there are so many laws that the government can pretty much pick what they charge a person with, because everyone is guaranteed to have violated *some* of them at some time.
If someone could find that, it would be pithy here.
-Styopa
I have a hard time understanding the controversy surrounding this. Police, Military and even some companies have been doing this stuff for years and no one has batted an eye. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea of armed drones, ANY armed drones flying about shooting at people, but the only difference between this guy and them is that they have tons of funding and absolutely no accountability. He on the other hand has comparatively no funding and absolute accountability, apparently even if no one has been harmed, inconvenienced or threatened.
Now, terrorist can use drone to shoot at people and claim that they are innocent juste because there is no law against stupidity?
If I tapped a shotgun to the front of a car, would that make the car a tank? No?
Okay, so why does attaching a hand gun to a remote controlled helicopter make it an armed "drone".
These things aren't even drones. Are they autonomous? Nope. Do they have any kind of artificial intelligence? Only to assist with hovering and gyroscopic stabilization... I wouldn't call that AI.
So first off, it isn't a drone. And second off... people could have glued a gun to remote controlled anything ages ago. Why is this suddenly a problem?
Who cares.
Here is where I will care... when the flying thing is ACTUALLY a drone. Aka it is autonomous. If the thing can fly around and play "the most dangerous game" then that's another story. Dude wires a hand gun into a remote controlled helicopter? I give zero shits. People get so worked up about stuff that is less dangerous than other stuff.
Like look at all the people worried about guns but for no apparent reason everyone has forgotten that it is really easy to either make or buy high explosives. Which means you can make giant frag grenades.
And if the remote controlled helicopter thing is just the scariest thing you can imagine... then imagine one of these things dropping a five pound frag bomb on your face.
This is one of the reasons I'm not afraid of the terrorists. The horror and darkness of my own demons makes the stuff the terrorists come up with sound cute by comparison. I mean, just stop and access your own darkness for a moment and think of the worst thing you could actually build if you were a terrorist and then compare it to the stuff the terrorists have already done. They highjacked four planes and got 3 thousand people dead... okay... that's something. Really pissed the US off so it has that going for it. But I can think of a few things off the top of my head that I could do multiple times that would kill that many and more especially in densely populated cities. Would I do it? I'm not actually a monster so of course not. But I can emulate such a creature. I'd never give the damned thing agency. But the outright horrors I can dream up without even trying very hard implies that the current crop of terrorists are in fact terrible at their jobs.
Remember that guy that was randomly shooting someone every couple days. It went on for weeks? THAT was smarter than a lot of the terrorist stuff. Doesn't kill a lot of people but it creates HUGE panic. But if you want to just get a body count... restaurants. Many have hundreds of people in them at a time. They're totally undefended. You could flatten the whole building. What is anyone going to do to stop you.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Cops and lawyers and government officials do not know if this is or isn't legal. So how would this kid? Even if someone uncovers some long buried statute that covers this, and proves it was illegal, how can you prosecute someone for violating a law so obscure that no-one knows about it. I know ignorance of the law is not supposed to be an excuse, but that's bullshit. If *everyone* is ignorant of the law, then why in the hell should ordinary citizens be held to a higher standard?
Right. We're all being "manipulated" into thinking that flying guns might not be such a great idea. Because how in the world could anyone come up with that idea on their own?
"It appears to be a case of technology surpassing current legislation."
They're intentionally not finding a reason to arrest him and they tell you why right there. They want new laws. This is an underhanded attempt at manipulating the public and I very much suspect it will work if the comments on this story are any indication.
Probably right. But from the comments it also does seem that he clearly broke the letter of the law unintentionally. So there is already a law against this. Just because a law is broken, however, doesn't mean that a crime was committed or that charges should be filed. This is an obscure law, at most the ATF should just issue a clarification that this is illegal under existing law.
That would be very reasonable. I'm very sure it also doesn't allow a new large budget to be appropriated and I almost guarantee the police are actually looking for new toys and less restrictions along with a bigger budget. I'd bet you a beer my interpretation is much closer to what you're going to see if the recent pattern holds. I am pretty sure of this: that quote wasn't an off the cuff remark; it clearly was a call for action while giving the preferred solution in a thinly veiled way.
OTOH, I'll be the first to admit that I very well could be wrong. We'll see how it plays out.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Remote turret hunting is legal and it uses a solenoid fired rifle. Not that the atf cares about precedent but it would at least be a defense.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Have gnu, will travel.
Citizens are supposed to know the law and understand its meanings. In this case police departments, lawyers and the federal government can not determine if any laws have been broken. Therefore it was impossible for the builder or flyer of the drone to even find out if his actions would break any laws. A new application of an old law may equal post facto legislation which is illegal. The concept of intent also applies. How can one intend to break a law if the applicable law can not be found? Then there is the intent to do evil. What evil was intended?
People are entitled to clear laws with clear meanings and universal applications.
Here is a recent creation of my own to try to help beggars : Some cities and counties have made it a crime to beg. They have even made it a crime "to hold a sign". So I tell the beggars to display a cardboard saying " The cops will arrest me if i beg for coins or mercy.". If they are arrested for that i think most judges or juries would see it as political speech as begging is not specific to the statement. Banning political signs or speech is probably quite illegal in itself. And i have another tactic that would make begging next to impossible to criminalize. All of us need to fight for freedom or we will suffer severely.
You're modded up - but you're actually comparing apples to oranges. Anyone with an IQ over room temperature does feel at least mildly threatened when adjacent to traffic - because it is a somewhat dangerous place to be.
But adjacent is the key word, while on the other hand the lethal weapon on a drone is dangerous at considerable range, both from the drone and from the operator. That's why many inhabited places have laws against discharging a firearm - but not against driving. That's why they're looking to see if the operator should be charged, but I'll be in no danger of being charged simply for operating a motor vehicle when I run errands this afternoon.
It would seem to the average person, there should be something prohibiting a person from attaching a weapon to a drone.
This has been coming for decades, and yet governments have been far too busy lining the pockets of members of the party in power to do anything about it. Donald Kingsbury predicted home-built cruise missiles in the '80's (in "The Moon Goddess and the Son").
It's been obvious since the early 90's that computing costs and hardware costs were falling so rapidly that anyone could do this on a budget of a few thousand dollars. That's now a few hundred dollars. And fully autonomous operation is not far in the future: it's just not that hard.
So the reason no one has done anything about this is that hardly anyone has been paying attention, and those of us who have believe that drone technology is worth the price of the risk posed by machines like this. There was simply no way to not get to this point without cutting off development of half-a-dozen technologies that are too important for too many things to ignore, not even counting the economic benefits of drones themselves.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
If so, how do they not know this is old news? FPS Russia not only attaches a gun, but it's an automatic submachine gun which he flies through a mock window to crash a "party," and up to a hill to "engage dummy insurgents."
Right. We're all being "manipulated" into thinking that flying guns might not be such a great idea. Because how in the world could anyone come up with that idea on their own?
I'm not at all arguing that point. I don't even particularly care one way or the other. I'm more fascinated that everyone is so busy arguing over over everything other than this blatant leveraging of the situation.
Hear me out. I'm saying that if they wanted to arrest the kid, they would. They're intentionally publicly saying 'Gee, nothing we can do about this! If only we had some new laws for this new technology...'. I guarantee if they weren't playing that angle they'd just arrest him regardless of whether a crime has been committed or not as people got up in arms about the whole thing. This is an opportunistic play for more resources the way I'm seeing it.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Maybe on your planet. Here on earth, they generally can't. On the other hand, bullets can trivially travel great distances. In the same way, except under very unusual circumstances the extraordinarily rare rampaging lawnmower can easily be avoided. A bullet than can't even be detected by human senses prior to it's arrival cannot.
Etc... etc...
Which is completely irrelevant - we're not discussing you or practically anyone else. We're discussing a specific individual behaving in a specific manner.
Some of these hobby systems have GPS route-following ability. I'd consider that pretty drone-like.
"For example, if you are minding your own business running a convenience store and some guys come in with guns demanding money, and out of fear for your life, you shoot first and kill one of them."
Or if you are minding your own business running a convenience store and some guy comes in with a fake lotto ticket and asks for money, pointing a gun. Then out of nowhere a rich man buys the ticket, and they leave the store together and he gives the gunman some eggnog, and the gunman laughs and says, "Remember, you did this to yourself."
The following day the rich man wakes up and he's no longer rich, but a FAMILY MAN sucked through a wormhole like STARGATE. Now he faces a fake reality in which he learns to love funnel cakes and is haunted by the sound of a bike's bell.
Oddly enough I found a case when you ARE following the law but no one, including police, would probably believe it. I found a case in WA when you DON'T have to have auto insurance, but I chickened out. There are some scary loopholes out there too.
So threatening you with a gun is ok? As long as I don't actually shoot you? Now substitute a drone.
No officer I wasn't shooting anyone, or even threatening them, I was just flying around my armed killer robot.
Threatening you with a gun is assault (i.e. threatening you with physical harm) and you can get arrested for it. You can also get sued if you have done an intentional act that is a legal and but-for cause of putting someone in apprehension of imminent bodily harm.
If you assault someone with your killer robot, it's still assault. If you do something stupid but intentional with the robot and it makes people afraid it will hurt them, they can still sue.
We don't actually need new laws to go after people who do something bad with a robot.
And yet we do it EVERY SINGLE DAY in aircraft, military drones etc..... And if you think the government is super careful, read up on how many nuclear weapons were lost in the 50s and 60s due to accidents.
Good-bye
The big problem with tech surpassing legislation, is that The People never bother to ratify a new constitutional amendment so that Congress can have the new right (taken/received from The People), which didn't get mentioned a few centuries ago in Article 1 Section 8 (and then explicitly excluded from the government's powers by the 2nd Amendment), to enact such legislation. This has been particularly conspicuous ever since the invention of the Atomic Bomb in 1945, where 70 years later, we still haven't repealed (or at least modified) the 2nd Amendment so that the feds have the right to prevent private nuke ownership.
So instead, we all just look the other way on the "do they have the authority" question (for good reason, because we have strong reasons for not wanting our neighbors to have nuclear weapons) and pretend that the laws are legal. The catch is that this totally undermines the constitution; if they can do this, then they could also restrict speech or religion or **GASP** even quarter soldiers in your own home. If we weren't willing to do anything about nukes (which are waay more threatening) then we're not going to have our act together on armed flying robots, either.
So here's the thing: so what if there are no laws violated here? We're not a nation of law anyway, no do we intend to be. (Otherwise there couldn't be laws until after the repeal of the 2nd amendment.) So what the cops ought to do, is simply decide whether or not they want to hurt this guy, and if they do, then they should go bully him. Not a single voter is going to object to that. (Because if they did have a problem, then they would be up in arms over other arms issues, too.)
This demonstration clearly proves that there is NO WAR ON TERROR OR ANYONE SERIOUSLY INTERESTED IN TERROR in that it is simple to affix a weapon or bomb like the government does to a drone and these could theoretically be released in the hundreds with lets say a C4 payload smh lets demand our government to stop the lies and let's trace that money
I suppose nobody should show them the FPS Russia video then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPJMk2fgJU
If they do then all the C-types at Bell-Boeing and Lockheed will have to be arrested as well.
to hold and fire a gun? It's not like such devices don't already exist.
That's only cover.
I am going to shoot person !
Or
I am going to mall x on day X to shoot people.
Saying I have a drone with a gun.
Is Not a illegal threat.
That's why I keep Bitching at people that you can say all you want about you hate X he should die horribly by fire.
But never every say
I will do X to any one.
That's when the swat team comes through the door an hour later.
So as long as he followed the proper laws in force at the location he was.
for the ownership of the firearm,
For discharging the firearm at that location.
In that direction.
Under standard safety laws.
Then what laws were broken?
I have no idea how long the shooting industry has had remote test benches.
You have likely seen them on mythbusters.
They started with a string, then a cable, then an electronic trigger.
Maybe a remote one.
Ok a flying one is somewhat different.
But check YouTube. You can get plans for all sorts of computer controlled autonomous firing platforms.
Mostly people use them for fun, armed with paint ball or airsoft.
They always say " It's against fed law to mount a firearm on one of these"
So if it is already federal law that you can't take a drone computer controlled or remote controlled robotic dieing platform, arm it, then leave it some where. Or mount it on a vehicle.
How in the Hell is a flying drone any different?