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.

Comments

Investigating if laws were broken

[IndustrialComplex]

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?

Re:Investigating if laws were broken

[Errol backfiring]

Except for the police, it seems...

Re: Investigating if laws were broken

[O('_')O_Bush]

He isn't talking about ignorance of the law, he is talking about law enforcement having to stretch a law so ambiguous and I'll defined that law enforcement can't figure out of it applies. Since LEOs aren't judges or legislature, it really isn't supposed to be within their power to make that determination.

To me, the most perverse thing is that the kid did nothing morally wrong or hurt anyone, but LEO is trying to find a way to punish him for scaring some chickenshits? That, to me, is just disgusting.

Re:Investigating if laws were broken

[Shakrai]

This is a legal principle that literally goes back to Greek antiquity.

In Common Law jurisdictions we have another principle that goes back for 800+ years: mens rea. Meaning that you have to have a guilty mind (i.e., intent) to have broken the law. Unfortunately this principle is being steadily eroded in favor of "strict liability" laws that require no intent, thus criminalizing more behavior and further expanding the power of the State.

Re:"Automatic" Weapon?

[Dredd13]

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.

Re: They're not going to arrest him!

[AvitarX]

More importantly, unless discharge laws were violated, why should this be illegal?

It's not concealed, nobody was hurt.