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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 Runaway1956 on Thursday July 23 2015, @02:42PM
Some damned fools believe it is reckless endagerment to own a weapon.
It isn't reckless endangerment unless and until the weapon is USED FOR SOMETHING ILEGAL! In this case, private drone with a private weapon ON PRIVATE PROPERTY. The Castle Doctrine applies here. Now, if the kid flies that gun down Main Street, blazing away at - cats? rats? cops? THEN he will have committed a crime, and he will have endangered people's lives.
I get so frustrated with hoplophobes. Owning a weapon is not a crime. Using a weapon is not a crime. You all sound like the Gestapo at RIAA. Bittorrenting is not a crime, either. Get over yourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday July 23 2015, @03:13PM
Assuming he clearly targets something on that private property that's not a person or an endangered species or something. I'm not saying he can't shoot, I'm just saying that he needs to be very careful about where he shoots and what he's pointing at.
A possibly relevant story: A friend of mine who lives in a more rural area had a neighbor who liked to shoot his guns. That wasn't a problem at all. What was a problem was that he would shoot his guns blindly into the woods behind his house, and my buddy owned the woods in question, and there was a very real risk of people walking around back there being hit completely by accident. The good news was that a conversation between my friend and his neighbor solved the problem without any kind of police involvement, but it could have gotten very very nasty had the neighbor not been as friendly.
I know gun rights activists tend to be of the mindset of us non-gun-owners being overly concerned about what's not a big deal. On the other hand, non-gun-owners like me have in the back of our minds that one mistake with a gun could very well mean somebody's dead. And there's no respawn.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 23 2015, @03:26PM
Even in very rural areas, firing blindly into the forest is considered reckless. I believe that the laws nationwide are in agreement that a hunter MUST NOT shoot blindly at sounds, because so many hunters have been killed in exactly that fashion.
MOST hunters have pretty good ethics about shooting into the woods. I'm at least a half step ahead of most of them though. I may miss my target - everyone does now and then. But, I KNOW where my bullet went. Because I don't blink when the weapon fires, I KNOW where my sights were aligned with when it fired. And, if I'm unsure about what I may have hit, I walk out there and investigate.
Yeah, we're in agreement about firing randomly, and it applies anytime, anywhere. Even if some park ranger could assure me that I was the ONLY PERSON in the woods, there was no other person with twenty miles, I still couldn't spray the woods with bullets. It's stupid!
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday July 23 2015, @05:26PM
Even in very rural areas, firing blindly into the forest is considered reckless.
Why is that reckless but aiming said gun through a small LCD showing compressed video sent via radio isn't?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 23 2015, @07:09PM
But, I KNOW where my bullet went. Because I don't blink when the weapon fires, I KNOW where my sights were aligned with when it fired.
So, one of the most important safety factors in your shooting is visually verifying your target and aim.
How do you do that from a quad-copter? Or, is the project intrinsically unsafe?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 23 2015, @11:35PM
That quad copter was hovering within the boys visual sight. The video of the shooting was taken by another off-board camera. The shooting took place in a controlled environment, that is, he didn't fly the copter 1/2 mile down the road, and out of sight.
What I would like to see, it the video FROM THE COPTER. I want to see how he aimed the weapon, and how he worked the whole thing.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday July 23 2015, @04:12PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 23 2015, @07:02PM
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 23 2015, @11:52PM
Your nitpicking falls short of hitting the mark. I am afraid of idiots with weapons. That doesn't make me a hoplophobe - I don't fear the weapons. Hoplophobes see a weapon, and they come unglued. In short, they believe that there should be laws preventing the existence of weapons.
Your statement about the US only displays your form of xenophobia. You don't identify with Americans, so you fear Americans. If your neighbor were doing the very same thing you wouldn't fear him. And, that is your problem, not mine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 24 2015, @12:41AM
Nobody is afraid of weapons. Your delusional worldview demands it be true, but its nothing more than a made-up strawman to make yourself feel better.