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Gun-Firing Drone Video Refocuses Spotlight on Legal Restrictions

A bill that called for creating a new crime that would prevent anyone from using a drone to "remotely control a deadly weapon, explosive or incendiary device" passed the Connecticut Senate, and will be addressed in the House of Representatives' next legislative session.

(TNS) -- With the viral video of a gun-firing drone making national headlines, Connecticut advocates are re-energized to pass a law next year that would ban such weapons. The state Senate unanimously passed a bill this year that would have banned weapons on drones used by both the police and the general public. But the bill never came to a vote in the state House of Representatives as time ran out in the legislative session. Advocates say it will be a top priority when the new legislative session begins in February.

Lawmakers have been studying the issue for the past two years, including forming a task force to better understand the new technology.

The latest interest spiked when 18-year-old Austin Haughwout of Clinton released a video that showed a drone carrying a gun-firing bullets — which has been shown on television news shows and viewed more than 2.8 million times on YouTube. He was not charged in the case after police said he had not violated any state laws.

"We do not want to see drones with weapons on them, as in this incident, where we can't take any legal action," said Cromwell chief Anthony Salvatore, who has represented the Connecticut police chiefs at the state Capitol for the past two decades. "From law enforcement's perspective, now, probably more than ever, we need to bring the bill back and address this type of situation."

Salvatore has been studying the issue for the past two years, and police have said from the start that they wanted to ban weapons and bombs from drones. But Salvatore said he was surprised at the speed of the change in the technology.

"I didn't think, this soon, that we would have somebody to this extent putting a semi-automatic pistol on a drone," Salvatore said Friday in an interview. "It certainly causes us great concern that it was done, and there were no laws broken. The whole thing causes law enforcement great concern."

He added, "Outside of the military, I cannot see any beneficial use. You wouldn't hunt this way. It's not something I would endorse."

David J. McGuire, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut, and others said that legislators were so tied up with the last-minute scramble on the two-year, $40 billion budget that they never debated the drone bill in the House.

"It essentially ran out of time," McGuire said. "The dysfunction of the legislature got to it. ... Everyone was expecting it to pass. It had a lot of momentum."

The video has resharpened the spotlight on the issue.

"This incident and others around the public show that regulating drones has to be a priority," McGuire said. "There's going to be a large area that needs to be filled by state regulators. I think the bill strikes the balance between liberty, privacy and public safety."

McGuire has been sounding the alarm that drones are an emerging technology that will expand sharply in the coming years as the usage is expected to explode.

"Drones are essentially where home PCs were in the 1980s," McGuire said. "This is the tip of the iceberg. This technology is really in its infancy now."

Citing a demonstration that was given for state legislators and staff members on the Capitol grounds, McGuire said the devices are so quiet that the general public can be completely unaware that they are being videotaped.

"Once this thing was up 200 feet, you couldn't hear it and you couldn't see it," he said. "These things can be operated virtually undetected."

Scott DeVico, a spokesman for the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, said, "Although we do not currently utilize drones, we do believe that they can be of great benefit to the first responder community with the right regulation, adequate oversight, and proper protections in place to protect the civil and privacy rights of individuals."

Unanimous in Senate

The bill that was passed 36-0 in the state Senate called for creating a new crime that would prevent anyone from using a drone to "remotely control a deadly weapon, explosive or incendiary device," according to the nonpartisan budget analysis. The deadly weapons include guns, switchblade knives, metal knuckles and other items. Anyone violating that law would be guilty of a Class C felony and be placed on the state's "deadly weapon offender registry," which is maintained by the state police for anyone convicted of deadly weapon crimes.

At the same time, the bill would allow various state agencies to use drones but require them to register the devices with the state Office of Policy and Management. Police too must register their drones and then report to the chief state's attorney's office every year with the date, time and place each time that the drone was used.

With small drones costing as little as $300, state officials are preparing for the day when thousands of drones could be clogging the air above Connecticut. Drones could be used by a wide variety of professions, from public safety to real estate, where agents could use aerial videos to show off a home for sale. In 2013, Amazon released a video dramatizing how a drone the size of a small table and resembling a helicopter could one day make home delivery of packages.

Nationally drones could be used for border patrols, search-and-rescue operations, crowd control at outdoor rock concerts, watching deep-water ports at night and creating maps. Firefighters in Branford used a drone last year to gauge the intensity of a dangerous blaze at the Stony Creek Quarry.

The Federal Aviation Administration regulates all activity, including drone flights, above 400 feet. The Connecticut bill would regulate drone flights below 400 feet.

Federal, State Efforts

State Rep. Matthew Ritter, a Hartford Democrat, was one of the first legislators to call for a new law to regulate the devices because they could carry weapons.

"People thought it was far-fetched and how ridiculous it sounded, and now it's happened," Ritter said Friday. "When we first looked at it, it looked like a futuristic world. But a teenage kid just shot bullets out of it. That's really scary."

He added, "Let me get this straight. You can go in an open field and fire bullets and you didn't violate any law? It shows you how outdated the statutes are. The police said there's nothing we can charge the guy with. I just found that hard to believe."

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said that his staff is studying the issue to see whether federal legislation is needed over drones — adding that the issue came up Thursday night during a telephone town hall with constituents.

"Drones present a new, unique set of policy questions," Murphy said in an interview. "What happened in Clinton is really scary. We've got to make sure that our federal laws are pretty clear on some of these new, thorny questions. … None of this is science fiction any longer."

With Republicans controlling both chambers in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats holding the White House, Murphy said that federal laws have been enacted at an increasingly slow pace. As such, states have stepped forward on various issues when Congress was slow to act.

"The danger is that as the pace of technological change increases, the ability of Congress to respond to it is decreasing," Murphy said. "Congress is less able than ever before to pass a law. The danger is that we are just not going to be able to respond to some of these new technological changes because of gridlock."

©2015 The Hartford Courant (Hartford, Conn.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.