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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: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 23 2015, @03:19PM
I'm not joking.
You've surely seen the email thing that circulates now and then. When we were kids, we drank from a garden hose, we rode bikes without helmets, we rode in the back seats of cars with no seat belts, we got Bee-Bee guns for our x birthday, and a .22 rifle for our y birthday - on and on. We survived. We grew up. Today's common "wisdom" says that none of us should have survived chidhood, but we managed. Mumbletypeg. Can you IMAGINE a child bringing a pocket knife to school today? Back then, if you weren't trusted with a Barlow by the time you were 7 years old, there was something WRONG with you!
There were weapons in many of our homes as we grew up. I, for one, simply would not consider touching my father's weapons. At age three, I was smart enough to understand that if I didn't hurt myself with the weapon, then Daddy was going to wear my ass out when he got home.
Imagine that. I had more responsibility at age three, than most teens are given credit for today.
I swear, some of those teen's parents should have won some Darwin awards.
Again - I'm not joking. Not at all.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday July 23 2015, @03:28PM
And I'm saying your ideology is bone headed. Mistaking it for a joke was explicitly not what I was doing there.
Social Darwinism does not work. Not on stupid-as-fuck personal mistakes, not on economics, not for getting rid of kinds of people you don't like.
At best, we embrace your ideology as a functional descriptor of how humanity works, and merely identify stronger r-selection in some cases and stronger K-selection in others, with no real utility for shaping the species. It's dumb.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 23 2015, @11:47PM
" It's dumb."
I think what you mean is, you don't like my thoughts, and you disagree with them.
Do you like reading? Try Tom Kratman's 'Training for War" a short essay. His essay applies outside of the scope of war as well. Safety, safety, safety - this preoccupation with safety makes us less than strong and capable.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday July 24 2015, @12:58PM
No, it's fucking stupid. This isn't some disagreement where I don't get your intention.
Seriously. You take a naive version of evolution by natural selection, decide it's automatically a good thing(it's called the naturalistic fallacy, and it's way too common), then apply it stupidly to "solve" a problem by causing grief and pain.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 24 2015, @02:05PM
What "problem" am I trying to solve? I have the Bill of Rights - and the right to bear arms. You're the one who doesn't like that fact. That kid with the quad-chopper also has his 2nd amendment rights, along with his property rights, etc. Anti-gun people don't like the fact that the kid is exercising his rights. As I see it, it is YOUR problem, that YOU are trying to solve. No hard feelings or anything, but I won't wish you luck with that. As I've mentioned elsewhere, if/when the government knocks on my door to confiscate my weapons, they can have them - bullets first. Hoplophobes need to bear in mind that if they ever succeed in passing all the anti-gun laws that they want to pass, they will at the same time be declaring war on a sizeable portion of the US population. Are we ready for another civil war?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday July 24 2015, @02:27PM
Oh Christ. Defensive as fuck gun owner gets side tracked with imaginary decision to take your guns.
"The problem" you're trying to solve is that people are dying because of unsecured firearms. You're solving it by being a callous dick with a shitty understanding of evolution. HOPE THAT HEEEEEEEEEEEEEELPS.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 24 2015, @03:20PM
Nope. People don't die because of firearms, secured or non-secured. People die because other people decide to kill them.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Thursday July 23 2015, @03:49PM
Today's common "wisdom" says that none of us should have survived chidhood, but we managed.
Straw-man.