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A story picked up from Ars Technica:
While we’ve heard of consumer drones getting in the way of commercial airliners and obstructing firefighting operations, we've haven't heard of many cases where drones are shot out of the sky by a neighbor.
Eric Joe told Ars he was flying his homemade drone over his parents' orchard in Modesto, California late last year. After just three-and-a-half minutes of flight time, a single shotgun blast rang out from the neighbor's property at the low-flying, slow-moving hexacopter. The drone came crashing down instantly and was damaged beyond repair.
After the neighbor, Brett McBay, declined to cover the costs that he initially was amenable to pay, Joe took McBay to small claims court last month.
"Court finds that Mr. McBay acted unreasonably in having his son shoot the drone down regardless of whether it was over his property or not," the Stanislaus County Court Small Claims Division found.
According to Joe's attorney (and his cousin), Jesse Woo, if McBay doesn't pay within 30 days voluntarily—the end of June 2015—then they can go back to court to try to enforce the judgment.
"If he doesn't pay within 30 days we have to go through court processes to find out what kinds of assets he has and then to get a lien and get a judgement against his assets or wage garnishment," Woo said, adding that he fully intends to collect the money owed.
"We don't believe that the drone was over McBay's property—we maintain that it was briefly over the shared county access road. But even if it did, you're only privileged to use reasonable force in defense of property. Shooting a shotgun at this thing that isn't threatening your property isn't reasonable."
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @03:03PM
So you think it is a good idea to allow anyone to fire upward in the air at a moving drone with no consequences? So they will always hit their target and nobody will ever have their bullet or shot find its way into another person?
I as a professional pessimist feel that civilians should never feel encouraged to fire any weapon in the air unless they know that there isn't a human being within a mile of their location. Seriously it is a really monumentally totally and in all cases bad bad idea. Someone will be killed eventually.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @03:38PM
Yeah, I was thinking about that. EMP pulse would be preferable, less noisey too.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @04:46PM
But an old cyclotron out of a microwave with a focused emitter should be enough to short the kind of electronics these devices have in them, even at range. If you only allow them a 90-75 degree arc above the roofline, and combine them with a webcam, some software utilizing opencv, and a microphone(s) sensitive enough to pick up and directionalize drone rotor noise (most of the current ones are HORRIBLY noisy), you could easily disable any coming near your property without illegal discharge of a firearm. Now the FCC on the other hand...
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday June 29 2015, @11:36PM
That is one big ass microwave....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @12:33AM
But an old cyclotron out of a microwave ...
That is one big ass microwave....
It was a circular microwave, made pop-corn in seconds! Needed some even bigger-assed magnets, though.
(Score: 2) by SecurityGuy on Monday June 29 2015, @05:11PM
Shotgun pellets don't go nearly as far as you think.
http://www.njskeet.com/files/shotgun_statistics.pdf [njskeet.com]
They're actually preferred for things well off the ground (birds, squirrels, etc).
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday June 29 2015, @09:46PM
You beat me to it. We used to get a good idea of our 12-gauge shot spreads by firing into a river from atop a raised bank, and after seeing that spread they're a lot less scary. It's also why we don't fire pistols and rifles out there unless we're shooting at fixed targets with a lot of backstop.
This was a case that was kinda iffy, where the drone's position over the property line was borderline, so I don't support the guy shooting it down. If it were very obviously in his property, though, I would support him shooting it down, doubly so if the drone were equipped with a camera.
The person you replied to wondered about the wisdom of firing in air. I wonder about the wisdom of people thinking they can fly drones wherever the fuck they want even though there's the ever-present risk of them falling out of the sky and hitting somebody, or colliding with a helicopter, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2015, @09:51PM
Shotguns aren't bad unless you're out hunting with the Vice President.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:23AM
The real life version of the 4chan "Are you fucking sorry" copypasta.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 30 2015, @12:01AM
Provided the aiming is correct. What would be the least dangerous ammunition one can use to disable a standard drone (30 cm wide?) ..?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2015, @03:25AM
A Nerf football?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:40PM
Can you really aim with precision of say 5 cm at a distance of 200 meters with that kind of "ammo" ?
It got a large surface area and may be prone to turbulence.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday June 30 2015, @05:16PM
Silly string : ) [wikipedia.org]
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