[gnicholas]

> The Federal Aviation Administration punishes any shots fired at drones with the same weight as if you’d opened fire on a Boeing full of passengers. Shooting at any aircraft is charged as a felony with up to 20 years in prison as the recommended penalty.

Whoa, crazy. I wonder when/how this will be updated?

[samatman]

I'm not sure what the right sentence is for shooting into the air at something which is going to crash to the ground, but it should be harshly punished. Either hitting or missing could easily kill someone.

[gnicholas]

There has to be a recognition of:

• size of target

• souls on board

• possibility of intrusion/spying

• type of projectile used

A 747 is huge, filled with people, and is not spying on you. To take it down, you would need serious artillery. At the far other end of the spectrum, if some drone is zipping around your house and videoing in your windows, are you allowed to do anything to take it down? Could you throw a baseball at it? Whack it with a pool skimmer?

There needs to be some nuance to recognize the massive differences between a SAM fired at a passenger jet and a pellet gun fired at a small unmanned drone snooping around your house.

[samatman]

A pellet gun is not taking down a delivery drone.

The topic isn't shooting a BB at a DJI Mini, it's shooting a bullet/slug from some sort of long gun at a delivery drone, one of these: https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2022/05/24/were-bringing-...

I agree that conflating airplanes and drones here is not ideal/correct, but as I said, both the bullet, and the drone, can easily kill someone if some reprobate decides to pop off at the drone.

I'd say a consecutive sentence for negligent discharge and reckless endangerment is about right, and bumped up to attempted manslaughter in places where it's crowded enough that this kind of behavior is straightforwardly as dangerous as, say, tossing a toaster oven off a tall building.

But sure, the penalty for shooting a Daisy Red Rider at one of the sub-250gm units should be indexed closer to property destruction/vandalism. If it's close enough to the ground to take a bead on it, it's not going to hit someone, and if it does, a laceration on the head is the worst outcome in the reasonable realm of possibility. Just don't be surprised if any legislation on this issue writes that particular scenario out of the picture.

[joe-collins]

I think it's a reasonable punishment for putting bullets into the air with little idea where they might land—and on whom.

[gnicholas]

That would presumably already be against the law in many jurisdictions (cities, suburbs), so there wouldn't need to be an additional law to cover the situation where you're shooting at a drone versus a squirrel.

[thrill]

Meh, 20 years is probably enough.