MadMonkey wrote:
Yep. I fly multirotors professionally and I worry about the day that someone will try to knock a $20k X8 out of the sky because they think I'm spying on their pool
We get it, technology is scary. But it's also VERY easy to misjudge intentions. For example, one of my cheap rigs will fly fairly autonomously. If I happen to drop a waypoint directly over a sidewalk where your daughter is walking, it's going to pause for a moment while it turns to the next waypoint before moving on. To the average person it's going to look like it's stopping intentionally.
Small FPV racers have another problem. We have tunnel vision with these aircraft, and our only method of checking our surroundings is to look.Many of us have big open fields we fly in, but if it's in a park, someone innocently flying around could EASILY be thought to following a kid on a bicycle that they're not even aware of.
.....
I honestly expect gun owners to have more sense than to immediately start shooting (into the air no less!) at the first sign of something remotely questionable. As CHL holders, we're supposed to be MUCH more mature than that, and yet I've seen hundreds of gun owners supporting this type of idiocy across multiple forums.
As a guy who is now racing FPV quadcopters, I have to tell you that "drones" are quickly being labeled as the "assault weapons of the skies," and if the analogy doesn't give you a little sympathy to what most _law abiding_ drone flyers do, think about this:
1) The FAA is now in the process of requiring registration of drones in a manner that is explicitly forbidden permitted by law, but they are citing "emergency needs" to begin regulating and licensing drones _at the point of sale_. Sound familiar?
2) The media pushes the paranoia of drones often by manufacturing fear (see the recent "investigative report" on KHOU about drones spying on you), without consideration of common sense facts. Sound familiar?
3) There are some dumb kids/young adults who are NOT following proper safety rules when it comes to flying their drones, and it's giving a colossal number of safety-minded drone operators a VERY bad reputation. Sound familiar?
4) Cameras on drones, especially the ones you can buy in most stores, have very poor resolution, FAR worse than your cell phone (and FAR noisier, should anybody be worried about privacy), but, again, people seem to think they have some kind of inherent magical properties that make them more dangerous to your security than anything else. Sound familiar?
5) In an odd twist, the one group that SHOULD be helping fight the FAA's panic push for regulations is the AMA (Aircraft Modeler's Association), which is the largest organization that supports and promotes model aviation. Instead, they're helping the FAA "carve out" special protections for "traditional modes of model flying" so that the majority of their clientele isn't affected (this should sound familiar to those of us that endured the Clinton years of "Assault Weapon" carve outs, particularly the shenanigans of Smith & Wesson and Ruger)
So, whether the drone flyer in this case had nefarious intentions or not (highly unlikely), please keep in mind that there are some interesting blueprints being established here by the FAA that could very well give legal precedent to something like additional regulation of firearms by the ATF.
Just some food for thought.
