Soooooo…stay out of the parks. Well just stay inside altogether. But they can come up to your windows I suppose, so…
I guess just kiss your ass goodbye.
The US Federal Aviation Administration says it is investigating an online video that shows an alleged home-made “drone” firing a handgun in the Connecticut countryside.
The 14-second video called Flying Gun shows a homemade multi-rotor hovering off the ground, buzzing furiously and firing a semiautomatic handgun four times at an unseen target.
It does, too. A gun. Firing. In a park.
It was posted on YouTube on July 10 and has been watched nearly 2 million times.
It was filmed by 18-year-old Austin Haughwout from Clinton, Connecticut.
Mr Haughwout is studying for a degree in mechanical engineering. Neither he nor police could be reached for immediate comment.
“The FAA will investigate the operation of an unmanned aircraft system in a Connecticut park to determine if any Federal Aviation Regulations were violated,” the group said in a statement.
“The FAA will also work with its law enforcement partners to determine if there were any violations of criminal statutes.”
Hey, if there’s no law against firing guns in parks, then there damn well should be.
But Mr Haughwout’s father denied his son had built a drone, which he said are pre-programmed, and said this device was manually controlled.
“People have been playing with RC [remote-controlled] toys for many decades,” he said.
“The proper name for this is an RC quadcopter.
“The media keeps using the inappropriate word because it helps you to generate fear.”
Because people shouldn’t have fear of some teenager firing a gun in a park? Is he serious?
The father said he doesn’t understand why people are making such a big deal of it. Sure, it’s just a gun, in a park. What’s to be afraid of?
I’m going to wait for NRA spokespeople to explain that man portable antiaircraft devices are the solution to armed drones.
Your constitution gives you the right to bear arms but that is obviously not what this is. So how could it be justifiably argued as being a protected right (if it’s not already illegal which should be the case as it would be in most sane countries).
Pretty sure the distinction between a remote controlled aircraft and a drone is negligible; it’s not like Predators don’t have operators sitting behind the controls.
Is the gun actually being fired in a park? It may well be legal to fire handguns where the device was being flown. Good luck aiming that thing at all (unstable firing platform, presumably limited sighting down the barrel, may or may not be precisely lined up).
I too sometimes get annoyed at calling RC quadcopters “drones” – it makes them sound way more sinister than what they are, which is just toys. However, if you put a gun on it, it’s no longer really a toy, is it?
It appears to have been fired on private property, rendering it legal. That doesn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Because as we know, if a bullet doesn’t hit the target it’s aimed at, it immediately evaporates into sweet-smelling mist.
Exactly. Guns firing randomly? What could possibly go wrong?
Guns don’t kill people… people kill… err…
So his father thinks it isn’t a drone because it’s a quad copter (which is semi-autonomous to make them simple enough for a human to control).
And it’s got a gun on it.
Oh hang on, that makes it a drone.
The kid wants to build himself a wannabe-Predator drone. And instead of shooting a gun in a controlled fashion, he’s making just about the most dangerous way to fire a weapon which is designed to kill people. Right-oh. I’d throw him out of college for that.
Not to alarm anyone, but I’ve figured for a while killing people with drones wasn’t going to be the exclusive province of the military for long at all, don’t expect I’m the only one noticing. It’s a pretty obvious innovation for a lot of people who want other people dead, and, really, as soon as it’s practical, I figure you can count on people doing it.
Could go into the general theory of why, with apologies if it’s all a bit obvious. Anyway: weapons have been going this way from when they were rocks found on the ground. Being able to ‘project force’ in such a fashion that it’s all about the other person dying and your not even being in risk at all has been a pretty constant theme.
Probably the only thing holding it back right now is that practicality. The military (or, really, so far, one military) can use drones half a world away because they’ve got a tonne of infrastructure making it possible, and situations in which, putting it kinda brutally, they really aren’t that picky about their targets; there’s places they’re happy enough just to put a missile. Most non-military killing is a bit more picky, so until drones are practical for finding and doing in one person specifically, they’ll be less popular. But I’d expect for targeted stuff in organized crime, it’s already starting to make some sense. Sure, a rifle toting quadracopter is a bit conspicuous and clumsy for stalking anyone at any length of time, but If you’re reasonably sure person X is going to be at spot Y at a particular time, maybe the drone can get where a human can’t, shoot from higher up, so on. Used at night with night vision gear, too, the whole conspicuous thing becomes less of a problem.
… but even as I’m writing that, one thought alarms me a bit: there are other sorts of killers not terribly specific about their targets: spree killers and terrorists, to name two. And now I’m almost wishing that hadn’t occurred to me.
If my child did anything that stupid, I would not be defending him. This is why humans should not have guns at all. They are just too stupid.
“Guns don’t kill people… people kill… err…”
Stray bullets and ricochets from jury-rigged firing platforms do.
AJ Milne says
July 22, 2015 at 6:03 am
Actually, it’s part of a beginning subplot to season 1 of Dark Angel
But … but … my drone has a constitutional right to bear arms. Or is that bare arms … I’m soooo confused.
lorn – maybe it’s to arm bears? Give semi-automatic weapons to polar bears – solution to global warming? Not sure how, just being snarky.
“Actually, it’s part of a beginning subplot to season 1 of Dark Angel”
It’s also a plot point in Bruce Sterling’s 1988 novel “Islands In The Net”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islands_in_the_Net
Yeah. Only the military should be doing that.
Ever since the day I got my first copy of the AIM/FAR, 14 CFR 91.15 has seemed excessively loose to me.
It seems like at least some sort of permit should be required. I understand that the intent is to allow banner towing operations and backcountry cargo drops to operate without burdening ATC or the FSDO. But maybe they could be given blanket permits that were good for a year or two to cut down on the paperwork.
Seems likely that this case was a violation anyway, even though the rule is loosely written, but a better rule would leave no room for debate.
When I saw this on CNN a couple of days ago, they were properly horrified. Then went on to a story about an Al Queda leader being killed by a US drone strike without the slightest hint of irony.
Two points:
Al-Qaeda is at war with the US and has a policy of killing civilians. Its leaders are legitimate targets.
The US public, through its elected representatives, controls its armed forces and could stop the strikes against Al-Qaeda if a majority wished to.
Neither is true of armed drones operated in the US by untrained and unauthorized civilians.