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Shooting down a drone is a federal crime. The FAA considers drones to be aircrafts and thus, shooting down a drone is the legal equivalent of shooting down an airplane. That said, it is rare that damage to drones is prosecuted the same as damage to planes even if they are equivalent in the eyes of the law.
Where things can get sticky, however, is when businesses like Walmart deploy fleets of drones for deliveries and invest in neighborhood outreach programs to build interest around drone deliveries and then some disgruntled private citizen shoots it out of the sky costing them business thousands in damage on top of unwanted press. Such an incident just happened when a Florida man in Lake County shot down a Walmart drone making a delivery to his neighbor’s house.
In Clermont, Florida, a 2-man crew was going door to door doing mock deliveries to grow interest in the drone delivery service offered by Walmart. According to reports, the crew were waiting in a driveway for a delivery and as the drone began descending they heard a loud gunshot.
Looking around, they reported seeing a 60-year-old standing in his driveway with a gun pointed at the sky and the drone, presumably ready to pop off another shot.
After that, they hightailed it back to Walmart because who wants to stick around if neighbors are firing guns at your drone? It was there they discovered the Florida man had done over $2,5000 worth of damage to the drone’s payload system with the gunshot.
Police got involved and deputies went to the man’s home and asked him if he had any incidents with a drone to which he admitted that he did. According to FOX 35 Orlando, the 72-year-old told police “he had experiences with drones flying over his home and believed it was watching him.”
It was at that point he was arrested for “shooting at an aircraft, criminal mischief with damage over $1,000, and discharging a firearm on public or residential property.”
As a born and raised Floridian who has lived around the country but is back in Florida now, it is hard to imagine this happening in other states but it is so, so easy to see why this would happen in Florida. This is the retirement capital of the world *AND* the conspiracy theory capital of America.
Are drones spying on you? No. They absolutely are not. Will drone delivery services continue to expand nationwide in the future even though the whirring of drones is incredibly annoying? They absolutely will and shooting those drones down will be treated the same as shooting down an aircraft, especially when billion dollar corporations are the ones flying the drones and they want to protect their products.