“It was just right there,” he told Ars. “It was hovering, I would never have shot it if it was flying. When he came down with a video camera right over my back deck, that’s not going to work. I know they’re neat little vehicles, but one of those uses shouldn’t be flying into people’s yards and videotaping.”
Some drone owners are morons. There was a case in California where firefighters were trying to get a blaze under control and people with drones prevented helicopters from getting into the air. Jesus people, use your common sense.
I hate guns, but I’d have done the same.
Not just helicopters. A DC-10 and the massive amount of retardant that would have helped with the fire. That’s a big difference.
It’s quite impressive when it flies a couple hundred feet over your head after popping up over a hill right in front of you. I about peed myself.
Maybe a better solution is to have a net launcher in your back yard (because of weapons discharge laws in most cities). Or better yet, get an RF jammer that operates on RC copter frequencies.
The incident that you mentioned in California was a HUGE fire in the desert of California that blew over I-15 and burned a bunch of cars, trucks, etc… The Drones INTERFERED with the Fire Service water planes, delaying them by 15-20 minutes from getting on the scene to put the fires out.
There is now a $75,000 REWARD from the State of California for info leading to the arrest of the ‘pilots’ of the drones AND a YEAR IN STATE PRISON waiting on that pilot too…
IF YOU HAVE / FLY A DRONE… AND you wanna get a close up and personal set of photos of people/cars/trucks/highways/forests being burned to a crisp because your drone machine is interfering with the planes getting there to put out the fire – YOU’RE GOING TO PRISON !!!
good!
what have guns done to you? It is a responsibility.
Guns are a responsibility?
Tangentially invokes the interesting debate about 3D property rights (i.e. if you own a home, do you own the airspace around and/or above it). SCOTUS has upheld that the airspace immediately above your property (that is, the airspace in which disturbances can be directly impactful to your life on the property) is generally yours, and by that precedent, this drone was definitely trespassing illegally. All of that said, I’m not sure the law is yet equipped to handle a situation like this (firearm discharge ordinances aside). You obviously couldn’t react this way if it was a person trespassing (unless they were threatening you in some way)—even in castle doctrine states. On balance, then, I think both parties probably have some legal culpability here, but again, I also think the laws of this country haven’t been modernized enough to make this cut and dry.
Send a drone into my ‘airspace’ and we’ll see how long ANY of the legal issues play on that miniature turntable… 31 NANOSECONDS.
hmm someone flies his toy into my private turf and violates my privacy. kept i’m taking it down. try and sue me