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posted by n1 on Tuesday October 20 2015, @11:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the department-of-droneland-security dept.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is set to announce plans to require registration for every drone sold:

Have a drone? You're going to have to register it with the U.S. Department of Transportation, according to NBC News.

The federal government will announce a plan within days that will require anyone who buys a drone to register it with the Department of Transportation, NBC reported Friday evening.

A Department of Transportation spokesperson told MarketWatch that U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Administrator Michael Huerta of the Federal Aviation Administration will release more details on Monday at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time.

"The hobbyist drone community has self-regulated itself for decades," said Lisa Ellman, co-chair of the unmanned aircraft systems practice at Hogan Lovells, a New York–based law firm. "But with the technology getting so cheap and improving so much, we have more and more drones."

FAA official Rich Swayze said last month that the agency expects that a million drones could be sold this holiday season.

"A lot of people are buying them and thinking they are toys," Ellman said. "They are not toys."

Florida lawyer Jonathan Rupprecht, author of a book on drone law, said he believes any plan centered around drone registration is a necessary first step toward regulating drones but is curious how the regulation will play out and whether the rule will apply to hobbyists with small drones.


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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 20 2015, @05:11PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 20 2015, @05:11PM (#252378) Journal

    The whole situation is rather ridiculous because the 2nd amendment doesn't even apply to firearms owned by private citizens. It applies to arms in general that are used in conjunction with the national guard.

    There's not much to the Second Amendment. You are, of course, referring to the non-binding preamble phrase ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State") as if it were binding. The obvious rebuttal is that wide-spread and non-infringed gun ownership means a large population of people who are familiar with firearms and thus, need less training for a militia. This explains the first phrase in its entirety without requiring us to blatantly ignore the second, binding phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" which is obviously meant to apply to firearms owned and used by private citizens.

    We have enough threats to our freedom without us creating more by ignoring our own laws whenever it is convenient.

  • (Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:02PM

    by Francis (5544) on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:02PM (#252464)

    You don't get to read the text as convenient and then bitch about other people disagreeing. It is a binding phrase and it wouldn't be in there at all if it weren't. Hence why the national guard gets to have all sorts of weapons that you and I aren't able to own.

    And no, having wide-spread gun ownership does not mean that there's less training involved. It means that you've got more training involved as you have to first de-train the people from all their bad habits and then retrain them on how to do it correctly. It's just like riding a motorcycle or playing golf, the worst people to train are the ones that already know something about it. Much of the time what they know isn't correct or causes problems later on.

    As far as owning goes, the whole purpose of the amendment was to keep the militia stocked with firearms because there was no standing army at the time and police were likewise heavily dependent upon rounding up a posse for anything non-trivial.

    And BTW, the 2nd amendment was never ratified. The text that was ratified was not the same as the text that passed the Senate and as such the amendment isn't even in the constitution at this point. I'm not really sure why people give it a level of credence that it doesn't deserve.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:44PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:44PM (#252485) Journal

      You don't get to read the text as convenient and then bitch about other people disagreeing. It is a binding phrase and it wouldn't be in there at all if it weren't. Hence why the national guard gets to have all sorts of weapons that you and I aren't able to own.

      Nonsense. There are other non-binding phrases in the US Constitution such as the Preamble [constitutionus.com].

      The amendment is also quite clear on what it means and allows. First, of all what part of "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" do you not get? "The people" clearly doesn't refer just to people capable of serving in a militia, much less people actively serving in a militia. "The people" is used elsewhere and it's clearly a broader class of people than even US citizens.

      "Arms" is a loose phrase and we could choose to interpret it as meaning any thing from the most minimal conditions such as a small caliber rifle or BB gun to nuclear weapons. But it makes sense to consider "arms" as meaning the sort of light weapons available to an infantry platoon, such as man-portable weapons like assault rifles (with large magazines I might add) or various sorts of rocketry and mortar ordinance.

      "keep and bear" is pretty clear, delineating a personal right to have whatever is considered "arms" on one's property and to use them in a responsible manner up to and including killing people with them in a lawful manner.

      And "infringed" clearly includes trying to ban firearm ownership and usage among people who are not in the National Guard.

      And BTW, the 2nd amendment was never ratified. The text that was ratified was not the same as the text that passed the Senate and as such the amendment isn't even in the constitution at this point. I'm not really sure why people give it a level of credence that it doesn't deserve.

      Bullshit. There are two things to observe. First, the Second Amendment did go through the ratification process as required and was properly ratified. Second, the ratification process does not preclude whatever you claim to have happened. A similar thing has happened with other amendments (16th Amendment [wikipedia.org], for example) and that hasn't been found to be relevant either.

      There is a proper process for changing or eliminating the Second Amendment. It involves passing both branches of Congress and being approved by a supermajority of the states. It doesn't involve reinterpreting the English language in a laughable way or claiming, 220 years after the fact, that the legal process wasn't properly followed (especially since that assertion wasn't true). Instead of presenting compelling reasons for amending the Constitution in a legal way, we find embarrassing and lazy sophistry.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:52PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:52PM (#252491) Journal
        As an on-topic aside, I believe unarmed remote control vehicles (and perhaps some of the armed versions too!) would be one of the arms protected by the Second Amendment as it gets incorporated into infantry warfare doctrine in the US. How is an impromptu militia going to use a battlefield unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) without training? At least, if people are routinely flying such vehicles privately as hobbies or whatever, then they'll be partly trained for flying and maintaining them in a time of war.
    • (Score: 2) by Spook brat on Tuesday October 20 2015, @10:41PM

      by Spook brat (775) on Tuesday October 20 2015, @10:41PM (#252507) Journal

      You don't get to read the text as convenient and then bitch about other people disagreeing. It is a binding phrase and it wouldn't be in there at all if it weren't. . . And BTW, the 2nd amendment was never ratified. The text that was ratified was not the same as the text that passed the Senate and as such the amendment isn't even in the constitution at this point. I'm not really sure why people give it a level of credence that it doesn't deserve.

      You don't get to decide that, the Supreme Court does. Next December 15th will mark the 225th anniversary of the Bill of Rights' ratification, and in all that time it's been upheld as the law of the land and recognized as a valid part of the Constitution by the Department of Justice and the nation's highest court. Even if there were irregularities in the method by which the 2nd amendment was passed, 200+ years of precedence says that it's accepted by the Nation.

      The High Court also disagrees with your interpretation of the meaning of the amendment, in a clear and fundamental manner. When ruling on the recent case of District of Columbia v. Heller [scotusblog.com] [PDF warning] the Court decided that the 2nd amendment does indeed guarantee an individual right to bear arms. The ruling is a pretty long document, but a good amount of meat is available right up front:

      Held:
      1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
      firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for
      traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
      Pp. 2–53.
      (a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but
      does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative
      clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it
      connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms. Pp. 2–22.
      (b) The prefatory clause comports with the Court’s interpretation
      of the operative clause. The “militia” comprised all males physically
      capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists
      feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in
      order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing
      army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress
      power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear
      arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved.
      Pp. 22–28.
      (c) The Court’s interpretation is confirmed by analogous armsbearing
      rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately
      followed the Second Amendment. Pp. 28–30.
      (d) The Second Amendment’s drafting history, while of dubious
      interpretive worth, reveals three state Second Amendment proposals
      that unequivocally referred to an individual right to bear arms.
      Pp. 30–32.

      TL;DR version: the 2nd Amendment grants an individual right to gun ownership. The first phrase doesn't limit the right to organized military forces.

      As much as you may agree with the four dissenting Justices (who echoed some of your arguments in their dissents), agreeing with current jurisprudence and legal precedent doesn't make someone bitchy, nor does it make their reading of the Constitution arbitrary or convenient.

      --
      Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]