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Kentucky Man Arrested After Shooting Down Drone
McGruber writes: Hillview, Kentucky resident William H. Merideth describes his weekend: "Sunday afternoon, the kids – my girls – were out on the back deck, and the neighbors were out in their yard. And they come in and said, 'Dad, there's a drone out here, flying over everybody's yard.'" Merideth's neighbors saw it too. "It was just hovering above our house and it stayed for a few moments and then she finally waved and it took off," said neighbor Kim VanMeter. Merideth grabbed his shotgun and waited to see if the drone crossed over his property. When it did, he took aim and shot it out of the sky.
The owners showed up shortly, and the police right after. He was arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first degree wanton endangerment before being released the next day. Merideth says he will pursue legal action against the drone's owner: "He didn't just fly over. If he had been moving and just kept moving, that would have been one thing -- but when he come directly over our heads, and just hovered there, I felt like I had the right. You know, when you're in your own property, within a six-foot privacy fence, you have the expectation of privacy. We don't know if he was looking at the girls. We don't know if he was looking for something to steal. To me, it was the same as trespassing."
The owners showed up shortly, and the police right after. He was arrested and charged with first degree criminal mischief and first degree wanton endangerment before being released the next day. Merideth says he will pursue legal action against the drone's owner: "He didn't just fly over. If he had been moving and just kept moving, that would have been one thing -- but when he come directly over our heads, and just hovered there, I felt like I had the right. You know, when you're in your own property, within a six-foot privacy fence, you have the expectation of privacy. We don't know if he was looking at the girls. We don't know if he was looking for something to steal. To me, it was the same as trespassing."
There has to be a better way to take down drones. Firing a shotgun in your backyard into the air is going to be some kind of misdemeanor, even in Kentucky. Something like "discharge of a firearm inside city limits" or something.
Can someone please start 3D-printing some silent drone-killing weapons? It would be so much more satisfying than clay pigeons and my neighbors cats. (Note to neighbor: I'm kidding. That wasn't me.)
You are welcome on my lawn.
1. Simply buy one of the many freq jammers amped up enough for about 200 feet and watch the drones fall out of the sky onto your property. 2. Become a drone collector and charge a property access fee for owners to retrieve their property. 3. Profit!
you _do_ know that outside of physics class we take air resistance into account, right?
They have cities in Kentucky?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
His drone just got shot down, and his first thought was to go knock on the shotgun-toting property owner's door?! Brilliant.
Their cousin?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Firing a weapon in a populated area except in defense of life and limb is a colossally stupid idea and patently against the law, just because your privacy is being violated is no excuse.
Today I learned that Hillview, Kentucky is a populated area.
But what can - say - Gisele Bündchen do if some obnoxious prat has a camera-carrying drone hovering over her home?
I suppose she could get Tom to deflate one of his balls and throw it at the drone.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black