A video recently went viral of a quadcopter shooting a gun, which Ryan covered last week instead of me because, for some reason, I’m not allowed to publish articles consisting only of a video and the word “No” five hundred times.
Before the video racked up two million views, it was already assumed the quadcopter / semiautomatic handgun was built by Austin Haughwout, an 18-year-old mechanical engineering student in Connecticut who’s previously been in the news when he was assaulted by a woman who thought he was using his drone to creep on her at the beach.
Haughwout’s father, Bret, has since confirmed to Newsweek that the gun-mounted quadcopter is his son’s work. He told Newsweek that the gun can be fired remotely, and he offered some theories on why certain people were angry about it.
“I’d say it’s the liberal mindset. Liberals just want to regulate away everything that people do. Anytime someone goes to do something, they want to put restrictions on it.”
I’m pretty sure you don’t have to be of any particular political persuasion to look at a deadly weapon being set up to be remote-controlled and attached to something liable to crash (or with the potential to be hacked or otherwise fail) and think that’s a bad f*cking idea.
It’s not, however, a currently illegal idea, according to recent investigations conducted by Connecticut police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). A separate investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is still in progress, so we’ll have to wait for their ruling on whether or not we can strap our own guns to a quadcopter and just go nuts:
No. No. No no no no no no no.
(Via Gizmodo, NBC Connecticut, Newsweek, and Popular Mechanics)