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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."
I know we'll be close within the next decade or two with drones but a remote controlled flying object with a camera is not human. So to answer your question, "no." Hell I'd shoot it too.
There has to be a better way to take down drones.
Sure, just toss a net over it.
Well he didn't shoot the man, he shot a mechanical proxy for the man, which is not the same at all. He attacked a piece of property which, under the direction of its operator, was being used to invade his privacy by invading the space over his property, and as he pointed out, not simply to transit the area.
Assuming the area was one where it would be generally safe otherwise to fire at a bird, then I have no issue with his reasoning, seems like he was in the right to me, even though I wouldn't agree if he had shot the operator; the two are not equivalent like that.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Your logic is not universal. Do people have a right to go shooting people on the street? Of course not. Do people have a right to shoot a home invader? Of course. If a creepy guy climbs your fence to take pictures of your teenage daughter in her bathing suit do you have a right to smash his camera? Many juries would say so. If he uses an RC drone camera instead? Same thing. Let's hear what's on the memory card.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
He used a shotgun, no worse than shooting a duck out of the sky, it's just pellets that would come down. It wasn't a rifle.
Shooting at the sky is bad. Falling bullets can kill.
This is a kind of overstated "fact" not really a myth but not wholly true. A bullet fired up at 90 degrees and then falling at terminal velocity is unlikely to kill a healthy adult. The problem is when they still have horizontal velocity as they fall that horizontal velocity can be quite substantial when the angle is 45 degrees or less. This man deserved his arrest, what he did was wholly irresponsible. Destroy the drone sure but firing a gun into the air without being certain of where the bullet, or shot in this case, will make its final impact is just irresponsible. Maybe someone should make a product that fires soft nets to capture these drones and bring them to the ground?
I'd say if it's over my property at a low altitude, yes, I should have the right to shoot the thing out of the sky, and further, if I can determine who was flying it, I should have the right to sue them.
Drone operators are getting an incredible sense of entitlement out of playing with their toys. I think it's time for some serious and substantial financial penalties.
Keep your fucking toy way from my fucking property.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The fact that the owner(s) showed up before the police did is proof that they knew where the drone was and what it was doing, and that they were in control of it: in other words, an admission of criminal trespassing.
That leaves more evidence and is less fun than something like http://fear-of-lightning.wonde...
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
We are accustomed to living in a 2D world (unless you live in a tall apartment in NY... and even then) but drones add a third dimension that we are not used to. I think the FAA has been far too lax in allowing drones to operate in unrestricted space and in not applying radio controlled airplane regulations to drones. Already we have drones crashing into buildings, falling on people, endangering commercial and emergency response airplanes etc, etc)
A good starting point would be to recognize the airspace above private property as part of the property, up to the level allowed to commercial aircraft. That would mean that drones could only fly above designated land surfaces.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
A neighbor you can ask to respect your privacy, then escalate as necessary until they do (which, in most cases, means asking again a little more strongly, but sometimes means yelling, arguing, or calling the police; extremely rarely does it mean shooting them and, when it does, it usually and rightly means prison time for the shooter). A drone, not so much. Because you can't initiate civil discourse with a drone and escalate as necessary, it becomes acceptable to employ whatever measure is necessary to remove the unauthorized recording device from our property. If it is flying too high or darting around too much for you to swat it out of the sky, your only recourse is to shoot it down. With the added benefit that you know it won't be back.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I haven't gone hunting in several decades, but I did when I was younger. I've had pellets from careless people's shotgun rain down on me a couple times. No, they don't maintain their lethality It'll scare the hell out of you, but it's not even close to lethal.
It's not clear from TFA, but it does say that the drone crashed in a field behind his house and that he fired at the drone when it was over his property and that he did not fire over other residences.
I don't know the full details of the story, so I'll reserve judgment, but I'd be inclined to do the same myself, depending on the situation. I'd probably use rock salt rather than lead though.
Ignore the above, the Glock 40 is what he was open carrying, he did in fact use a shotgun on the drone.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Actually, those numbers are for airplanes...
Helicopters can fly lower than that... but there is a rule for them... The short version is, helicopters can fly at any altitude so long as they don't cause hazard to persons or property on the surface.
I asked my FAA rep about that once and the answer he gave me was this:
"If I get one phone call from one person claiming a helicopter is flying too low, I might give you a call and say 'hey, be careful out there'. If I get 5 phone calls from 5 people saying a helicopter is flying too low, then you're already guilty. Don't scare people on the ground."
And I've done plenty of aerial photography from below 500 feet, including over a major city (Dallas, TX). The key is to not linger anywhere and to not scare the crap out of people. If people come outside and wave you away or give mean looks, leave. They are right and we're wrong.
The irony is that I DID get a visit from DHS once. We were hired to take some aerial pictures of a building that just happened to be right next to a police station. This was in a commercial office area, no homes. The irony is that we were in fact at 500ft, but people on the ground can't always tell that. An over excited police officer decided we were terrorists and ran it up the chain of command. By the time we landed, 5 police cars were at the airport and we found out the military had been alerted to a possible hostile aircraft (they did not take off AFAIK). Once we provided our ID and explained what we were doing, they let us go. We got a follow up visit a week later from two men in suits who had some brief questions, but overall they were nice about it. It probably helped that we had a good relationship with the FAA and had years of experience doing this with a fixed base of operations that was well known. This was in 2007, for what it is worth.
Idiot drone pilot flying around other people's property a mere 10 feet off the ground? Damn straight you should have the right to take that thing out. But it should still be illegal to shoot it down with a gun. That's just a public safety hazard far worse than the drone. Saying that it should be safe because shot is small and doesn't hurt when falling is like saying that it's safe to point a gun at somebody and pull the trigger because you think the chamber is empty. Some idiot is going to eventually make a mistake and shoot at a drone with something he shouldn't, something that isn't going to be as harmless as birdshot.
My suggestion for dealing with low-flying drones: pool skimmer. If it's just hovering there 10 feet off the ground, just grab the thing out of the air (or smack it hard enough to down it). If it's flying low enough over your property for the pole to reach it, then it's flying low enough that you should be allowed to take it out.
I actually hope the guy who shot it down just gets a small fine and let go.
I'd much rather see the jury demand to know why the victim, and not the four perps, is being prosecuted, with a not guilty verdict. Considering where this took place, it's possible.
I actually hope the guy who shot it down just gets a small fine and let go.
I hope he gets no fine. And the drone operator gets investigated for trespass, peeping tommery, or whatever other offenses exist to protect people's privacy.
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