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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.
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.
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.
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.
"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...
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
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.
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.