Nobody knows how much trouble this guy is in, because the law hasn’t kept up with technology. The case comes out of New Jersey: the suspect shot a drone that his neighbor was flying over his house and blew it out of the sky.
He’s facing one count of possessing a weapon for an unlawful purpose and criminal mischief, since you’re generally not allowed to shoot inside city limits unless you’re in danger. But how would he know? Drones have become bigger and more powerful, and the military is even using them. Nobody has been shot by a weaponized drone yet, but it’s not impossible.
The law in New Jersey does address drones, but not shooting them down. We checked, and neither does North Carolina law. Among other things, our state bans people from conducting secret surveillance with a drone, which includes taking pictures with it. And if you discover somebody did, you can get $5,000 per picture.
But the law does not say anything about weaponized drones, or whether you’d be allowed to respond to a drone with gunfire. And consider for a moment how much people hate drones these days. Remember the Connecticut woman who beat up the kid who had a drone at the beach this summer? He wasn’t even taking pictures, or so he says.
But we’re likely to see more and more of them. Delivery services like Amazon and Google shopping want to start using drones to dispatch packages for same-day delivery. If you pulled out a shotgun, you just might blow away that brand new shotgun you ordered… oops.
Our Man on the Edge, Robert Wilder, loves blastin’ trespassers with rock salt, but should it be legal or illegal to shoot a drone hovering over your property?
