Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
>>>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.
Only the 2nd should be illegal. There is an increasing trend (decades I mean, if not longer) to criminalize what "might" occur, rather than just criminalizing actual harm. Here's a summary of what I "think" should be the laws: Shooting somebody - illegal Just carrying a gun, openly or not - not illegal. Recklessly shooting into the woods - maybe The last one's the hard part, but it slips so easily into "pre-crime" that it gets weird, and makes people afraid to do anything that "might" end up being a crime, though nobody was hurt. Thus this issue: Putting a gun on a drone - legal Shooting somebody with a gun on a drone - DEFINITELY ILLEGAL All IMO.
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.
If we made "recklessly shooting into the woods" illegal, hunting enthusiasts and the NRA would be up in arms.
Besides which, there's no evidence such a thing happened with the drone - all we can tell from the video is that the drone was firing a pistol in the woods. It could perfectly well have been firing into the side of dirt hill that was off-camera. Maybe even someone's safely designed target shooting range.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Threatening to hurt someone is illegal, threatening to hurt them with any kind of weapon is a bigger charge regardless of the weapon.
Simply having a weapon in someone's presence isn't illegal even if they feel threatened. It isn't your fault is someone is overly sensitized to guns or simply timid.
In the case of a threat it makes sense for the charge to escalate because the level of threat is escalated by a weapon. For everything else where there is a more substantial charge because a gun was involved it's ridiculous. If I actually hurt you it's how bad I hurt you that counts which automatically accounts for a gun. If I robbed you what difference does it make what I use? You suffered the same injury.
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.
As someone else pointed out, look at the stats. Cars cause far far more accidents and deaths than guns and they include self-defense and police shootings (which are the bulk). You are more likely to get struck by lightning than shot by a gun.
Are you terrified and suggesting it should be a crime when someone is sitting behind the wheel of a parked car with the engine turned off and you are in the path? Well, you are in far more danger there.
The side effect of the governments successful disarmament of the people is that all our civilian firing mechanisms are essentially technology from the 1800's, and for the most part we found the safest and most reliable variations on them 50-100 years ago. A standard wall outlet, most power tools, climbing in your attic or on your roof are all things that are more dangerous to you than a gun in the hands of anyone who isn't deliberately trying to shoot you.
The gun can't actually go off if it isn't cocked with tension behind the firing pin and a bullet in the chamber. Check that, treat it like it's loaded anyway. Assume it's going to shoot anything in the general direction you point it at anyway. Don't keep your finger on the trigger. The bullet comes out the hole at the end. There shouldn't be anything in that hole. The bullets are the boomy part and dramatically less likely to go off spontaneously than firecrackers but should be treated with the same caution if they failed to go off.
There you go, you and everyone who reads that paragraph now has all the gun training they need to be beyond perfectly safe holding a gun. Pretty much all of it any idiot would guess just looking at one and knowing it's purpose. When you hear people calling a guy waving a gun around a moron they mean moron not ignorant. 99% of those morons are actually people who understood once they checked for a clear chamber the gun was safe. That part is partly just to shame you in to being aware at all times and to prepare you for how much people over-react at the sight of a gun.
To learn that much and the rest you need be perfectly safe SHOOTING a gun takes about 20 minutes and one clip of ammo. A couple clips and someone who knows how to shoot and you'll actually be a decent shot.