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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 23 2015, @01:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the drones-can-now-shoot-back dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by CirclesInSand on Thursday July 23 2015, @02:34PM

    by CirclesInSand (2899) on Thursday July 23 2015, @02:34PM (#212683)

    There is nothing "obviously wrong" about this project at all. "Obviously wrong" would mean that there is intent to harm someone or a reckless endangerment of other people. And if you were thinking at all, you'd realize that handguns are farm more dangerous in a hand than on a drone.

    The only thing "obvious" is that you are scared by the reality that other people are capable of hurting you. You simply want to outlaw anything that makes that fact unignorable.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @03:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @03:01PM (#212696)

    I should have qualified: It's obvious to anyone who is not an asshole. This "project" has consequences that go beyond the range of the gun that was mounted on that toy, so where that gun was fired is beside the point. One obvious consequence is that some politician will use this idiocy to ban something. Another obvious consequence is that people are now more afraid of drones than they've been already. I wouldn't call this stunt "terrorism", because that fear may not have been intended, but what that asshole did certainly has some of the effects.

    To say that a gun is more dangerous in a hand than on a drone is beyond stupid. Despite all the advanced sensors and control algorithms that keep a drone stable, it is still a moving and naturally unstable platform. It is remote controlled, which means the pilot and shooter has limited perception of the environment that the drone is in and what the gun shoots at. Control of the drone is through radio communication on non-exclusive frequencies, most likely not encrypted or authenticated. The pilot can not guarantee permanent control. The software which controls the gun actuator is not verified, and neither is the software which controls the drone, which was not designed to be used in life-threatening applications. Glitches in the power supply, a loose cable or any number of problems which are common in the RC world could trigger the live gun.

    No thanks for anything. People like you ruin it for everybody else.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @09:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @09:41PM (#212868)

      Oh, its you again. You know what, anyone that is against a private citizen doing whatever they want privately is an asshole. I am sure everyone that isn't an asshole agrees.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @10:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @10:13PM (#212880)

      >One obvious consequence is that some politician will use this idiocy to ban something.
      You are not a free man and do not live in a free country.
      Kill the politician like dylann storm roof killed the politician near him that was pro-gun control.