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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.
Solenoid driven trigger pulls (such as used here) do, in fact, require an NFA tax stamp as an automatic weapon. It's a regulation designed around the scenario you describe (push button once, solenoid opens and closes repeatedly).
Almost certainly, that's what the Feds are investigating now, determining the exact details on how the gun was fired (that it did in fact use a solenoid-trigger-pull, etc.).
In other words, it may not be an FAA violation, but it's almost certainly a (probably-accidental) ATF violation.
In that case, I'm pretty sure regulatory organizations *know* the law. There is no ignorance there. But they still can't decide if a law was broken.
In that situation, how can an individual know with certainty if he break the law or not?
"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 regulation is clear on this point (so I'm told, anyway, I haven't read it myself), because the *device* at that point has nothing mechanically preventing multiple bullets from firing per "manual action" (the button push in this case), it becomes a NFA weapon.
Essentially, you've got a "manual" operation, a "trigger" operation, and a firing of a round. In a conventional firearm use the manual operation and the trigger operation are the same. Mechanically at that point (in the normal firearm), the firearm prevents multiple rounds from being fired per manual action (by requiring a trigger release, and re-pulling it).
When you're using a solenoid for the trigger-pull, you lose the "connection" between the manual operation and the firing of rounds that is necessary to remain NFA-compliant.
More importantly, unless discharge laws were violated, why should this be illegal?
It's not concealed, nobody was hurt.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
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.