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An 18-year-old student in Clinton, Connecticut has led the Federal Aviation Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and local police to investigate after his video of a quadcopter drone firing a handgun went viral.
According to his father, Austin Haughwout assembled the drone warrior for a college class project with the help of a professor at Central Connecticut State University. A spokesman for the university said that the professor strongly discouraged Haughwout and that the drone wasn't related to a class project. The 14-second video, posted on YouTube on July 10th, shows a quadcopter hovering and firing a semiautomatic handgun (unconfirmed that this was a Kel-Tec PMR-30 pistol) four times in midair. CNN reports that the agencies involved haven't found any evidence of wrongdoing:
"We are attempting to determine if any laws have been violated at this point. It would seem to the average person, there should be something prohibiting a person from attaching a weapon to a drone. At this point, we can't find anything that's been violated," Clinton Police Chief Todd Lawrie said. [...] The Federal Aviation Administration and federal law agencies are also investigating "to determine if there were any violations of criminal statutes," the FAA said.
[...] Law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes, a former director of the FBI, said he believed the gun drone could be illegal as a form of reckless conduct. "What if the drone gets beyond the distance of the radio control? We had that drone land on the front lawn of the White House," Fuentes said. Earlier this year, a U.S. intelligence agency employee lost control of a borrowed personal quadcopter drone, which crashed on the White House lawn. "Do we want drones out of control that could land who knows here? We could have a child pick up the drone, pick up the gun, and accidentally kill themselves. I see the whole thing as reckless conduct," Fuentes said.
This isn't the teen's first taste of national drone fame. He was assaulted by a 23-year-old woman last year while taking aerial footage of a beach using an unarmed quadcopter. Despite assaulting a minor and lying to the police whom she had called to the scene, in contradiction of video evidence from the drone and Haughwout's iPhone, she received just 2 years probation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pendorbound on Thursday July 23 2015, @01:38PM
What if a bunch of reckless lawmakers jump to conclusions about all the possible horrors that could come from something they completely fail to understand and pass dozens of over-broad laws further eroding personal freedoms and chopping off a budding branch of technological innovation before it has a chance to prove itself?
Mr. Fuentes' fear mongering in this is offensive to anyone who can objectively and logically evaluate risk. There's lots of ways something like this could go bad. If they do, you use current civil and criminal negligence statutes to deal with it. If the designer dots all of their I's and crosses their T's, then they weren't negligent, none of those horrible "what if's" happens, and the sun continues to rise in the east.
Some child could accidentally pick up a stick and stab themselves in the eye with it. You don't need a gun to hurt people. Flying things do sometimes crash and hurt people. The fact that there isn't currently a rash of these things happening suggests that legislation would be at best premature at this time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @01:47PM
There are no laws against getting into an accident, but there are laws that forbid behavior which leads to accidents. The reason is simple: There are reckless people. That's why "use your head" isn't enough. These people may dot all of their I's and cross their T's, but they do it to cover their ass, not to avoid danger to others.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Thursday July 23 2015, @02:32PM
Seems to me many of those reckless people have badges and fly around in cruisers, yet pickpocket anyone who dares disregard the laws they disregard every day.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Thursday July 23 2015, @02:35PM
The police are advocates of our culture of fear because that fear means more tax dollars and power for them.
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(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @03:17PM
I don't get the children thing at all.
Wasn't there a story about some baby that got mama's gun in a supermarket and shot her with it? I mean, if your nation loves guns and is allowing them in supermarkets and stuff, I wouldn't worry to much about a gun that's attached to a drone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2015, @12:49AM
No, you don't need a gun to hurt or kill people, but they make it so easy that everyone, even babies, can do it, merely by applying 2-5 pounds of pressure. Thats significantly less effort needed to kill than with any other tool or action. There is no other tool that lets you murder as many people as you want with only the tiny motion of a single finger.