May I patrol my property with armed drones?

Factual Questions
1

Hypothetically, I live in a rural area in a 2nd amendment friendly state. As I understand it, patrolling the perimeter openly carrying a rifle is permissible.

Well, I’ve gotten tired of all that walking and would rather sit in my chair instead. So at the top of my barn I install a remotely controlled gun turret with a 360 degree field of fire, using a few hobby servos. There’s a visible light and an infrared camera with zoom lenses mounted where the sight goes on the rifle it is equipped with.

A servo will pull the trigger on a computer command.

To find targets, a team of quadcopters patrols the perimeter using machine vision to detect possible humanoid targets.

It’s more than a little glitchy, but it mostly works. Mostly.

Once a target is detected approaching, the computer running the remote controlled gun has machine vision capable of tracking targets. I merely have to pick up a tablet computer, switch to the feed from the remote controlled turret, tap a target to select it, and a bunch of scripts calculate a ballistic solution and angle the actual gun using servos.

One more tap and it fires.

How many laws would this theoretical setup break?

2

In general, you’re not allowed to shoot someone who is not a threat to you.

3

You violate the same laws as you would killing someone with a dog or an old-fashioned trip-wire booby trap. (Of course, state laws will vary.) Just as in the other thread about trespassing, fancy technology doesn’t change any of this long-established case law.

4

OP specifies that he must “one more tap” to fire. If it requires a live human to manually push the button to fire, that isn’t my idea of a “booby trap”.

If it were entirely automated, firing on any intruder without human intervention, that’s a booby trap.

5

First of all, your topic is misleading. Your first post does not seem to be talking about armed drones. Just observation drones. I don’t see any problem with them, but IANAL.

As for your “Trespassers will be shot” philosophy, I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. Even with the varying Castle laws and Stand Your Ground laws, I think you’d need more than simple trespassing for a lethal response.

6

Wisconsin might be an exception.

7

From what I’ve seen, most folks who get in trouble for operating drones usually seem to run afoul of the FAA. For starters, I’d consider keeping the drone low-ish so as not to get clipped by a Cessna cruising by (500 feet above the ground is a typical advised minimum altitude for private pilots, though the minimum goes up if they are over a populated or urban area)

8

The criminal law against homicide is the big one. You would certainly be violating that one.

9

You’re not breaking any laws by building the setup. Letting computers do the targeting, and “tapping a screen” doesn’t make you any less the shooter.

The only real question here is under what circumstances is it legal to shoot “trespassers.”

Is It Ever Legal to Shoot Trespassers?

10

Right, but presunably the whole premise of the OP is that by the shooter not being present (as in the case of a booby trap) somehow this scenario would be different from a standard shooting.

11

Obviously, this doesn’t get around any laws about homicide or assault. In circumstances where would be illegal to shoot somebody with a more conventional setup, it would be equally illegal to shoot them with this setup.

And, as noted, while the thread heading postulates armed drones, the scenario outlined in the OP doesn’t actually involve armed drones. If it did, there might be a problem; there are bound to be laws regulating the fitting of armaments to aircraft.

There are laws in most places about the proper method of storing and securing firearms, although obviously these vary from place to place. If your gun is permanently mounted on the barn, I suspect you may have a problem. The general idea is that when the gun is not in its secure locked place it is your immediate possession and under your control. Having it mounted on a turret on the roof of your house may not be quite enough. Especially if you’re asleep at the time, or at the movies, or at the supermarket, or wherever.

12

How about a drone that drops a beer parachute.

:smiley:

13

I suspect as quadrocopter type drones become more popular, they’re going to succumb to bird shot more and more often.

14

It would seem to me to be the same as a scoped rifle with a bi-pod on a table.

I can look through the scope to see better than my normal eyes to shoot at a legal target on my property. I will get in trouble if I shoot people without very good reason but rats and rodents rabbits are fair game.

I can leave my rifle on the table in rain or shine, snow & ice, overnight if I want too. In my fenced property with proper signage or on a flat place atop my barn in rain or shine, overnight etc.

Now, I used a quad copter to look with, better looking with technology right? Just like a scope or a night scope.

I can aim my rifle with my hands or with strings & sticks that are attached to move it around on & under sand bags to get it aimed correctly according to what I see in the scope. The scope does not need to be attached to the rifle.

I can remotely move my rifle atop the barn with radio control servos like model planes use. IO can do that on the table on my porch if I want to.

I can shoot at legal things like targets, cans, rats or etc…

Why would looking through a live feed camera on a quad copter be different than through a scope?

Very first post starts off say you can shoot people. He did not ask that, he asked if he could patrol in that fashion in his area where he can legally walk around with an open carry rifle.

He never says he is going to shoot off his property or at people or at anything. Just if the set up is legal.

IMO, it is legal as per the OP’s conditions.

If other factors are added, then it is not the same question.

Using different conditions to defeat the original question is just rude and unfair and cheating. … OH wait, this is the SDMB… never mind the last sentence.

15

You assume that this is in a city and not on a 640 acre farm with the house right in the middle. What state has laws that rifles on personal property outside of city limits must be inside & locked up? :smack:

16

Better than a pizza IMO. :smiley:

17

I’ve no idea. I don’t live in the US.

Lots of jurisdiction have firearms licence conditions which require licensees to store their weapons securely when not in use. It’s pretty much the point of firearms licensing that firearms should not be into the hands of unlicensed people, and we know that firearms are attractive as objects of theft, and are dangerous in the hands of ignorant, immature and ill-trained people, so this is neither particularly surprising nor particularly oppressive, to my mind. In the setup describe in the OP, it would be quite easy to steal the rifle if you picked a time when his itchy trigger finger wasn’t hovering over his tablet, and this strike me as a fairly obvious flaw in the system which a half-way rational licensing system ought to address.

If you tell me that no state in the US has such laws, I’ll happily accept your word for it. Your knowledge is doubtless greater than mine.

18

I’m sorry about that. When I started typing up the topic, I had in mind drones carrying firearms. But I realized just how difficult an engineering problem this would be, as the mass of the firearm + ammo + servos + gunsight camera would hugely increase the payload weight of the drone. This in turn means you need a hugely larger drone to carry all this hardware if you want the same battery life.

So the drones merely providing observation with the bullets coming from elsewhere sounded like a more technically achievable solution.

19

If there’s children living in the home, then in Oregon the guns must be locked up in a gun safe. You probably won’t get prosecuted, but you’ll lose your kids.

20

OK, but given that these things are not autonomous, there’s no real difference between the setup you describe and a much simpler one where you sit atop the house with a gun and shoot strangers yourself. Do you think additional technological gubbins between you and the trigger makes any difference? Why?