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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @02:02PM
If people were really thinking about the children, there wouldn't be so many "think of the children" panics. They are detrimental to society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @03:52PM
They may be detrimental to society but not the children. Only adults worry about that stuff. The kids are too busy <verb the latest fad here> to notice or to care.
(Score: 2) by githaron on Thursday July 23 2015, @04:18PM
Even if it was true that they are not detrimental to the children, those children become adults eventually.
(Score: 1) by D2 on Thursday July 23 2015, @06:06PM
Yeah, but fuck the grownups. Think of the Children. Pretty much says it right there.
(Score: 1) by D2 on Thursday July 23 2015, @06:08PM
(nuts, soylent ate my </ snark> tag.) Guess I need to get serious about allowed settings and pseudomarkup here...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @06:08PM
At which point they are no longer in danger of the things that require the rest of us to "think of the children".