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.
> 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.
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/what-know-about-drones