What situation are you referencing here? First one that comes to mind is Malheur but one of them was killed and 7 went to prison.
To wit:
> The Bundy standoff’s most significant legacy may be the precedent it established: that armed resistance against federal authorities could succeed without serious legal consequences for participants. This outcome has had a profound impact on antigovernment extremist movements, creating what experts describe as “a straight line” connecting Bunkerville to the Capitol riot.
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/apr/13/a-decade-of-defianc...
The media and government tried and tried to paint him as a criminal but ultimately all the kings horses, men, and prosecutors weren't able to persuade a jury.
This is technically correct but is a misleading characterization of the events according to Wikipedia [1].
> The first criminal case resulting from the standoff, against six Bundy supporters, was declared a mistrial by U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro on April 24, 2017.
> The mistrial was declared hours after the jury convicted two men of some of the 10 counts in the indictment.
The case was declared a mistrial with prejudice due to prosecutorial "misjudgement" that prevented a fair trial of the Bundys.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff#Prosecutions_of...
For Malheur he was found 'not guilty' on all charges 'according to wikipedia',
>On October 27, 2016, Ammon Bundy was found not guilty on all counts.[87][88]
Unless you are thinking of another trial of Amon, I think you are mixing up someone else (6 others?) or another event. I admit it is easy to mix it up with Ammon, because the government tried to pin felony charges on him so many time and always hopelessly failed just in multiple ways.
Of course sometimes a criminal just gets away with it, but when the government tries so many felony charges and fails each time, that is when I decided to investigate 'the other side of the coin' and quickly found the portrait portrayed by the media of Ammon is in my estimation highly distorted.
While it will do nothing to convince one way or another of his guilt, I highly recommend listening to some of his interviews and videos and actually trying to understand him, and I think you will be surprised. His ideas and speech were not at all what I expected based on the media portrayal.
I don’t know exactly how he’s escaped consequences, but I don’t think it’s because he’s actually reasonable and correct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Du-jbE022I
"Not medically necessary." The baby was not about to die, in fact the doctor admits in the bodycam to manufacturing a story to take Cyrus away via a transfer for cover for removal to foster care. The baby was stable. The hospital then defamed Mr Bundy by lying about the circumstances.
>about to die of malnourishment
Why would a child be discharged straight to CPS foster care with a transfer only to obfuscate that, if the child were about to die? The child is stable, ready for foster care but simultaneously about to die? These are not simultaneously compatible in this context, someone is lying. And I think the end result thankfully bears this out, as the CPS case was ultimately cleared and charges dropped against the mother.
The doctor was saying the baby was stable enough to transport to another hospital, which doesn't contradict the assessment that the baby needed prompt medical care that his caretakers were unjustifiably fighting against. (The baby may have received some immediate treatment that made him safe enough to transport, but not ready to leave hospital care.)
I believe the references to CPS foster parents by the doctor were about the transportation and stay in the hospital, not to immediately discharging from the hospital into a foster home. So the child was stable enough for transportation, under the watch of CPS and also medical professionals, and there was reasonable concern that the child would not get the treatment it needed if discharged to the parents right away. I don't believe there's any contradiction here, in the actual statements, rather than the distorted versions from Bundy.
The baby was returned to its family after approximately a week. That doesn't prove it was totally healthy all along and the parents did nothing wrong. It suggests CPS didn't have a strong case the parents would endanger the baby in the future. Maybe the employees didn't want Bundy followers stalking them at their house, like they did to hospital workers.
No this is the defamatory statement the hospital misleadingly made against Bundy, but in the video she clearly states the baby is being transferred to another hospital to release to the foster family and that the transport wasn't even medically necessary but rather was cover. The whole point of the conversation was removing the child from the hospital into foster care but under a fraudulent premise of medical necessity while distracting the family.
>https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/community/boise/ar...
Lol you have the video cam right in front of you that contradicts the materially false and malicious defamatory statements against Bundy in this newspaper. I choose to believe the direct recordings of what happened over what an editor says happened, or the testimony the doctor said after the fact when she had months to rehearse with hospital lawyers.
She mentioned a foster mom, not that the purpose of the transfer was to get the baby to the foster mom. And why would it be anyway? You think the state couldn't have released the baby from the first hospital directly to a foster parent? The only thing stopping them was the protesters' presence and knowledge of which locked doors the baby was behind? The baby was already forcibly taken by the state at this point, right? So why does it matter whether it's police, social workers, or foster parents that currently have the baby? The deception made a safe transfer easier perhaps, but it didn't directly enable the transfer.
> The whole point of the conversation was removing the child from the hospital into foster care but under a fraudulent premise of medical necessity while distracting the family.
Sure, she did say the transfer wasn't medically necessary. She said it was to get away from the protesters. Sneaky, probably not illegal. I believe she later said it was a higher standard of care too, but I'll admit that may been said to better justify it as you allude to.
Other things she said in the Idaho Statesman video: "Failure to thrive", lost 0.75lbs since last checkup. Not signs of a baby that was perfectly healthy at home, not something that surprises parents in a matter of hours, completely at odds with Bundy's attempts to say it was healthy. The state was going to move the baby from a hospital to foster care on the diagnosis and data alone, regardless of sneaky hospital transfers to try to defuse the protesters.
There are lots of reasons a baby might lose weight, many of which are not abuse or neglect. Losing a lot of weight does not mean abuse or neglect is involved, it can be some sort of disease or illness unrelated to parental malfeasance. In fact, the baby was initially brought to doctors voluntarily.
This kind of behavior doesn't help kids. It just makes people stop seeking health care and then they avoid any 'mandatory reporter' so their children won't be taken away. Doctors have also recently lead to many children being removed due to unexplained broken bones when really the child had 'broken bone disease'.
>The state was going to move the baby from a hospital to foster care on the diagnosis and data alone, regardless of sneaky hospital transfers to try to defuse the protesters.
That a 'diagnosis and data (of losing weight) alone' (plus, IIRC the baby was having checkups but missed one on a day when the mother was sick) would result in this kind of trickery by a doctor and collusion to take away the child is exactly why Bundy has this kind of support. We're seeing this at scale with other diseases and Bundy is a case of someone actually doing something for justice for the kids to take them back out of a cash-for-kids foster system that has incredibly high rates of abuse, neglect, and loss of children.
> She said verbatim in the bodycam "some time tomorrow, when they don't know, get the baby out with CPS to the foster parents."
I've already said, CPS didn't need her to say that in order to put the baby into foster care, so this isn't evidence she was colluding with them for that purpose. But okay, I'll grant you it made it easier, and it's understandable it feels like collusion even if I don't think it altered the case much. I won't call it fraud because she was transparent to the temporary guardians of the baby.
> Losing a lot of weight does not mean abuse or neglect is involved, it can be some sort of disease or illness unrelated to parental malfeasance
Yeah, finding that illness is why the baby had doctor appointments... which the family missed one or more of, after already having been in and out of the hospital a few times, then resisting the police's attempts to check on the child. The state stepped in to ensure the baby could return to health and stay healthy. I get that these things can be controversial in general, but I don't think there's anything uniquely damning to the state in this case.
> Bundy is a case of someone actually doing something for justice for the kids
So it's okay to threaten and harass doctors, hospital security guards, police officers, social workers, judges, at their place of work and at their homes; cause hospitals to lockdown and divert ambulances; and claim the state and hospital are a pedophile child-trafficking network, as long as it gets a kid home early? Society can't function like that. If this kind of thing were done at scale, more people would be harmed than would be saved.
Maybe there are CPS cases where some of these extreme tactics would be justified in my mind, but it isn't this one, a malnourished infant who's been in and out of hospital and misses appointments with parents resisting police checkups. The baby probably would have been back home in a similar timeframe without threatening a bunch of professionals just trying to do a job so they can take care of their own children.
The level of restraint Ammon showed was shockingly high. I think the opposite of you, a society cannot exist where such activity by the state, hospitals, doctors is tolerated the way it is with such passivity. A big part of the problem is that not enough people have yet discovered Bundy, and the state has done their best to prevent his ideology from spreading because they have seen first hand it is both effective and persuasive.
But I admit I am speaking from a bit of a bias, as I was forced into a hospital in handcuffs, abused by doctors and the state, and then footed the bill when a fraudulent search warrant was executed accusing me of being a drug smuggler. Doctors, nurses, etc just went along with it and believed the cops, willing to run the Milgram experiment like the loyal dogs they were. And then I was sent the bill, despite no drugs being found they put in my medical record they suspected me of being a 'drug packer' despite finding absolutely nothing. I think what Bundy did for Cyrus is one of the most valiant events I've read about, because I know the truth of how they violently operate intertwined with each other while extorting their involuntary subjects for the bill, and I felt for one of the first times in my life somebody stood up to the kind of abuse I experienced.
They offered a plea agreement to the Hammonds (cause d'etre of the whole thing), who were then sentenced for a wildland fire under dubious circumstances.
After the sentencing it was a done deal, it was over. Then Obama's DOJ had to stoke the flames and reneg on it.
It shouldn't have been a surprise what unfolded after the government reneging, in a way that was so egregious that they (the people that were the cause d'etre for the Malheur occupation) were pardoned with the following remarks during the pardon:
"The evidence at trial regarding the Hammonds’ responsibility for the fire was conflicting, and the jury acquitted them on most (sic) of the charges." According to his spokesperson Sarah Sanders, who read the statement, "The previous administration, however, filed an overzealous appeal that resulted in the Hammonds being sentenced to five years in prison"
So you can see the Malheur occupation was a response to a federal government who engaged in such tyrannical behavior as inducing a plea bargain that gave up right to appeal, then themselves hypocritically appealing the sentence and changing it after the fact. The Malheur occupation was a response to this, if Obama had 'done nothing' in the case of the Hammonds or just respected the judge's sentence none of it would have happened. In my estimation Bundy et al was the only thing that brought the Hammonds the visibility to get the justice of a pardon under these circumstances.
No real need to address the standoff, when the standoff is yourself vs yourself, and your own guy is by his own admission providing a "supervisory" role of the live fire.
After crashing his truck avoiding a roadblock during the high speed pursuit Finicum got out and attempted to draw on officers. He was literally yelling "shoot me" as they shot him.
There's video from the air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZWX3Tz1tQI
And inside his truck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEswP_HSFV4
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_Nati...
The rest still stands, and the following interesting facts
>An Oregon State Police SWAT member, identified in the trial of FBI agent Astarita as "Officer 1", fired three shots with an AR-15, into Finicum's truck as it approached the roadblock.[144]
>While Finicum was leaving his truck, an FBI Hostage Rescue Team member allegedly fired two shots[146] one of which entered the truck and ricocheted, inflicting the minor shrapnel wound on Ryan Bundy.[32]
... and then apparently after all this, then he 'attempted' (lol) to draw after police shot at him multiple times (which would be wholly inappropriate after someone tried to kill him with an ar-15), except I can't find evidence he actually did draw.
In the aftermath, the police had to lie about the event:
> They later determined that an FBI Hostage Rescue Team member fired twice at Finicum, missed him but injured a second militant in the process. The agent, whose identity was withheld, was under investigation, along with four other FBI agents who were suspected of attempting to conceal evidence of the gunshots. They reportedly told investigators that none of them fired a shot during the incident.[40][41]
So they initiated fire, seemingly had a guilty enough conscious about initiating fire that they lied about it, isolated one old man who didn't draw and executed him. Clap, clap, brave men!
> He was literally yelling "shoot me" as they shot him.
... he was yelling shoot me, I am going to see the sheriff -- after actually being shot at. I realize your theory is that anyone who puts their hand near their pocket who is pocket carrying on a cold day is 'attempting' to draw, of course no matter if you actually tried that defense as anyone but the enforcer class you would lose horribly and have years in jail to think about it. You have a murderous interpretation of self defense here.
... until you realize ~ a dozen of the Malheur were informants, and the 'boat ramp' live fire exercises they touted were orchestrated by a self described "psyops" 20 year swiss military veteran (Fabio Minoggio) on the payroll of the FBI who took on a "supervisory" role. Then the FBI refused to identify the informants during trial, so we don't even know which of the 'armed standoff' members were actual just the government fighting themselves and instigating others along with it.
The more you look into the case the more you find out why the jury acquitted ammon. It looks as if the jury decided the government had a standoff with itself.
> Can you shoot down drones above your property?
> It’s illegal under federal law to shoot at an aircraft. A private citizen shooting at any aircraft – including unmanned aircraft – poses a significant safety hazard. An unmanned aircraft hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air. Shooting at an unmanned aircraft could result in a civil penalty from the FAA and/or criminal charges from federal, state or local law enforcement.
What if 10 neighbors collude and start flying drones over my garden and house, only a few meters above ground or my roof, 24/7? What if one of their drones crashes without my doing and hurts _me_? So the actual rules need to be more nuanced than this, to prevent people doing crazy shit with their tech gadgets hurting others. They cannot be given free reign in that matter.
What if your neighbours climb on your roof and start banging on your windows at night?
Pour encourager les autres and all that.
Worth noting that in the US, castle law[1] is ardently defended and not something to be tested by FAFO.
Parent's point is that you should not apply that methodology in order to test the applicability of castle law in the US, since you might end up dead.
Re the FAA rules, there's a clear difference between planes or helicopters going overhead at safe and relatively high altitudes* and drones flying at much lower ones. Occasional passes from hobby or semi-pro drones used by photographers are a minor irritation, but if drone delivery became a regular thing I can see how frequent low altitude flybys would quickly become maddening. relying on existing law for new circumstances generally yields poor results.
* I live quite near a hospital with a helipad so about once a month I have to deal with a helicopter coming under 100 feet (~35m) and making the walls shake.
I imagine it will remain ambiguous until a sufficiently public stunt forces the issue all the way up to SCOTUS and they determine a concrete minimum distance that must be maintained from structures.
Are you under the impression that either of these things is legal, and that gunplay is your only recourse?
Having tried to get the authorities to deal with a harassing neighbour even in a big city, that sounds extremely plausible.
Playing in the hands of the corrupt is to shame others for not relying on a fundamentally unreliable police force, in fact.
There are more appropriate legal avenues one can use to curtail harassment, besides blasting away with a firearm.
> What if one of their drones crashes without my doing and hurts _me_?
You can step away and avoid it, or swat it away with a baseball bat, and/or if it hits you, you can sue them for property damage and injury. None of these scenarios require you to fire a deadly weapon into the air.
Honestly, this thread is scary--it reads like a bunch of people yearning to shoot their guns at something and trying desperately to find a wild scenario to justify it.
Naturally the FAA wouldn't be inclined to advertise such lines of thought.
So at what point does it change from "my property" to "public airspace above my property"? 5 ft? 20 ft? 100 ft? AFAIK we don't currently have a definitive answer. Personally I lean towards the effective range of a 12 gauge.
Drone regulations are solidly established. The law isn't determined by uninformed commenters on a web forum. And "the effective range of a 12 gauge" will result in jail time. I worked for an autonomous drone company that had a price point around $30,000; destroying one of those could be felony-level vandalism.
The law, including the bounds of FAA jurisdiction, is determined by the courts. The question is under what conditions navigable airspace supersedes private property rights. This isn't a matter of what regulations the FAA has or hasn't published up until now but rather a question of where either the courts or the legislature determine the FAA's jurisdiction begins.
It also rubs up against state's rights since the FAA is a federal entity. I don't think anyone takes too much issue with the federal government regulating activities 30,000 feet up. Many trees in city parks exceed 100 feet though. By the time you're immediately outside the window of a 2 story house I think it's fairly obvious that the federal government doesn't get any say in the matter.
> destroying one of those could be felony-level vandalism.
Presumably the operator of such would have the presence of mind not to intentionally hover one over my lawn, outside the window of my house, within range of a 12 gauge. If they don't, well, honestly I might chance the courts. It would certainly depend on the circumstances though. Related, I've seen a few videos from the drone's perspective of the fire department shooting it down with water when the operator flew too close to an active house fire.
Right now it's uncommon and largely handled by civil courts.
(This may or may not be a Simpsons reference.)
Does the FAA have jurisdiction over paper planes? What about the airspace in my house and does it matter if the doors are open?
On the other hand, I don't think government agencies have much incentive to preemptively limit the scope of their authority, but would be happy to hear of counter-examples.
See above.
False, at least according to this FAA Fact Sheet:
“The FAA has exclusive authority to regulate airspace efficiency for UAS at low altitudes”
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/uas/public_safety_go...
https://ageagle.com/blog/european-union-drone-regulations-ex...
https://www.dronepilotgroundschool.com/kb/can-i-fly-my-drone...
https://nexttools.net/how-close-can-you-fly-a-drone-to-a-per...
https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/light/topics/flying-drones-clo...
https://www.dronelaw.pro/faa-rules-say-you-cant-fly-your-dro...
this allows you to film your own family & friends enjoying a picnic, but not endanger, harass, annoy or intimidate some other group, from enjoying thier lives
in context this is about ireland and private property so to be purist about -on topic, we need to look at EU rules regarding flights over homes and yards.
I would like to shoot them down too but then I became 12 and a half years old instead of just 12.
As a policy that has to just apply across the board by default, of course the rule has to simply be be that you can not shoot at things in the air. I have no idea how bird hunting is handled but I bet it simply fails a logic test and shouldn't be allowed for the exact same reasons.
Now a tazer or a net or harpoon, all with physically limited tethers... Well there can be no safety argument about whacking something with a baseball bat, and anything with a tether that isn't rocket powered with 1000 feet of range is basically as safe for legit aircraft as a kid with a bat. IE it doesn't matter how inept the yahoo is, their capacity for harm to others is limited to a few people physically very near them, which is the same danger evrryone is to everyone else all the time.
Bird hunting is handled with #8+ bird shot, which at 45+ degree angle it is essentially at terminal velocity by the time it comes down, considering they are basically BBs it is mildly unsafe coming down (as in you'd have to be incredibly unlucky) anywhere within maybe a couple hundred yards at worst and essentially completely safe beyond that.
What a time to be alive: mess with Uncle Bezos' trillion-dollar empire for appropriating your property? arrested with federal charges. kill a family pet? nothing we can do.
As for killing animals that wander onto your property... that's been controversial for at least the last 160 years, when a similar incident almost started a war between the US and the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_War_(1859)
Follow the money
It's also illegal in the USA, btw.
Agree. But a good way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to have folks shooting at drones.
But anyway if you aren't rich enough to laugh off half a decade of court costs then you probably shouldn't shoot at them at all.
At least one Florida man is out there plinking Walmart drones at 400 feet with a 9mm. Saw another who took one down from a boat also with a pistol (probably 9mm also), but can't find the video now.
The Venn diagram of "shoots at drones" and "concerned with other people's safety" is two separate circles.
Most people don’t have dashcams. Drones, on the other hand, would have evidence of both the crime and criminal intent.
Just do a search for "charged with shooting at drone".
> Civilian shootings at drones occur at a rate likely below 15 incidents per year in the U.S., compared to over one million registered drones.
I'm going to have to conclude that this strains and breaks the bounds of the term 'frequently' and the initial term 'incorrect'.
Depending on where you live, they might even be neighbors of yours.
Something showing up every month is pretty damn frequent, especially when it leaks into national news and always grabs headlines, yet idiots still do it.
I mean if a plane fell out of the sky once a month, is that frequently?
What about if your bank blocked access to your account once a month when you needed it?
I frankly don't give a shit to spend time on this with you anymore.
It's pointless to debate our personal definitions.
Have fun
Checking if you’ve got a new car or your kids are wearing new clothes could be important data points.
Sadly, I’m only half joking.
Whatever you can think of some fucker will be willing to try.
I don't know what laws in other states/countries are, but I would guess many have something similar that would prevent that.
Or maybe claim any cameras are just for obstacle avoidance and require you to let them film as part of the delivery contract?
I mean Meta downloaded almost every pirated book[1] they could and no one’s really done anything to punish them.
1. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
Sure, they can say the cameras are for "obstacle avoidance" all they want, the camera is on? Well, they just captured and used images/video of everyone's private property to get to that delivery and did so with intent. So they might have permission from the one person getting the delivery but they don't for the hundreds of others they past, and I would not want to get that settlement bill in the mail.
Things can go wrong
Any drone I would be able to pick off with a firearm would have to be low and slow enough for me to capture it with less violent means.
Then I’m not shooting anything. I’m seizing property that shouldnt be here like I would a kids frisbee or a an abandoned vehicle. They’re free to ask nicely for it to be returned
Again, it is an aircraft. Ask yourself that same question, only substitute “Cessna” for “drone”.
It's a felony to attempt to damage, destroy, disable or wreck any aircraft. How you do it doesn't matter.
You'll want to examine this a bit more closely: is the aircraft in a location it should not be? Above your house is likely to be a valid place for a drone, whether you like it or not. Exceptions are for things like airports (other air traffic) and sporting events (large crowds).
So when you use a net to capture the drone out of the sky, you are not collecting it from its location of abandonment on your property, you are stealing it. (That's assuming more lax rules on disabling drones vs. other aircraft, per the sibling comment.)
But that’s really all assuming; I’m not a lawyer, just a layman with an interest in logical systems.
Edit:
I should add that I generally think about the regulations for small drones (<.55 pounds and some other things) rather than the <55-pound ones because I have looked into flying one. I still think it’s maybe not the best idea to net a 30+ pound piece of flying machinery but the pilot certainly has more things to worry about.
If it fell in "aircraft in distress" case you're fucked because it was operating legally.
There's not a jury in the world that would convict someone of shooting a drone flying over there own backyard.
Just yesterday, I told a drone operator that it was illegal to fly where he was.
He told me that because he clicked "I agree" on some setup software that made it legal.
A long time ago I got to spend some time doing this and it was trickier than one might think. You have to lead over 3 dimensions instead of 2 and the vehicle speed is more variable than most things.
If delivery drones become commonplace, there are going to have to be regulations about which air corridors they can use (altitude and routes) or it will be chaos.