Maybe they just need some elbow room?

That would be a lot of war dead.

Exactly wrong. The will go down because they must go down. Insurance is highly regulated.

So, you're saying they were guinea pigs?

So, he says it was over his yard, the kids say it was over their yard, the neighbor says it was over their yard. Does anyone, including the drone owners, dispute that? One would have a hard time arguing it wasn't over their yard.

That seems like something provable. He only fired one shot, correct? And we know where the drone crashed, and where he was, so we can probably determine if that's a false statement. It doesn't seem like it. He must have shot up in the air, because he hit the drone, and the drone was in the air. And it crashed in a field near his house, not in a neighbor's yard, so the statement that he did not fire over his neighbor's fence does not seem false on the face of it. I wonder if his neighbor actually saw the shot, too.

As for warning about a falling drone, don't know. And we don't know if it was necessary. We'd need a better look at his neighborhood, and the reasonable assumptions one could make (or not make out) about the trajectory of a crashing drone. It depends on how populated his neighborhood is. But nothing in the article indicated any possibility of it hitting someone while crashing. Possible, sure, but you'd think that issue would have been explored if it existed.

The article says he was charged under the Kentucky Revised Statutes with "wanton endangerment in the first degree" and "criminal mischief." Here's the wanton endangerment statute:

Do you think he exhibited "extreme indifference to the value of human life" and created "a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury?" Clearly not from the shotgun blast. As every hunter and student of simple physics in this thread has already said, there's no danger from falling pellets. And if the direction of the blast checks out (not at anyone, not over his neighbor's fence, etc) then the blast itself did not create any danger to human life.

So how about the falling drone? If he shot the drone down in a crowded area, where it would almost certainly hit someone, then yes. That does not appear to be the case, though. Nothing from the story indicates there was any significant risk of it crashing into someone. If that had been the case, you'd think they'd put it in the story. Obviously that needs to be confirmed, but I think it's likely. If no reasonable person could believe the drone had a reasonable chance of crashing into someone, then I don't see how you can convict him of wanton endangerment.

So how about criminal mischief?

I'm assuming it's in the first degree, as the value of the drone was over $1,000.

Well he did intentionally destroy property causing loss of more than $1,000. So the question is did he have a right to do so, or any reasonable ground to believe he has such a right? He clearly believes so. He believes he has the right to destroy a spy camera hovering in his backyard. Whether or not that's reasonable is up to a jury. But in Kentucky? Own backyard? Father? Kids who could either be injured if the drone crashes on its own, or by the drone pilot intentionally, or at the very least be spying on them taking pictures? I'd bet a Kentucky jury of his peers would agree that Meredith had reasonable grounds to destroy a spy camera on his property. You own your airspace up to 300ft per the FAA, and there are Supreme Court decisions that agree you have property rights over your airspace.

I hope he takes it to a jury. I'd like to see what they say. I bet he will, too. He believes he's right, and I bet a defense attorney would love this case, if not just for the news spotlight alone.

There has been public outcry. People are talking about it. Laws are getting passed. Opinions are changing. Snowden is in exile for now but I don't think he'll stay that way forever.

The US declared war on Germany on 12/11/41. It took two and a half years to land at Normandy. It's still 1943 and you're declaring Hitler victorious.

Do they have a good reason to be firing the weapon?

"Justification" is a thing. You can argue in front of the jury that yes, you broke the law against firing weapons in city limits, but you were justified in doing so because reasons, and they may or may not agree with you.

So, are the neighbors just randomly firing their guns in their air for shits and giggles? If so, he would not respond favorably. If they're firing their shotguns in the air to defend their property and privacy from flying surveillance devices, he'd probably tell his daughter to go inside for a bit while he goes and helps his neighbors deal with a nuisance.

Somebody else in the comments had a good idea...garden hose on full blast. Consider it a warning shot. Yes, I think Meredith was justified in what he did, but I like the hose idea, as you're less likely to wind up arrested.

I agree with twistedcubic. RMS, what questions should we be asking/proposing?

Would have been nice if the police had confiscated the media card from the drone.

Bullets? Yes. Shotgun pellets? I doubt that's ever happened. They're too light and they spread too far. They're supposed to be shot in the air.

There's a risk of falling drone debris (which would be on him, as it was above him when he shot it, and I would assume he'd have told his kids to get out of the way), but there's zero chance of danger to anyone from the shotgun discharge.

Completely agree. You don't have to be able to bang out an OS, but man, if everybody just knew how to grep through some files or automatically run an SQL query, dump the results into an Excel file and email it to somebody, the world would be a better place.

Pick your poison. Get robbed by your coworkers or get robbed by your boss. You're still getting robbed. But I bet your coworkers will rob you less, given that they're being robbed by the same process.

Resistance was futile!

Oh, sure, I'm just saying it would be funny. Revenge for all the epithets /.ers have hurled at him from this site. Not nearly so many since he retired, but you remember what it was like in the late 90s and early 2000s.