Airborne_Again wrote:
That depends on what kind of gun laws you are talking about. It certainly does matter if gun laws restrict access to guns. Similarly, if access to drones was restricted then it would make a big difference.
It depends on how you think it can be restricted. Handguns are (nearly completely) banned from private ownership in the UK yet they are the most commonly used type of firearm in crimes within the UK.
I’m not even sure how you could limit access to drones with people being capable of building them oneself from readily available parts? and If you try to restrict part sales I’m sure someone would get a whole load in a box from china without much trouble.
I can’t see going after people who obey the law is going to help much in these sort of cases if they are indeed malicious drone pilots and not people making hoax calls.
Hopefully they can come up with some sort of reliable monitoring system and rapid response to incursions.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Similarly, if access to drones was restricted then it would make a big difference.
What would make the biggest difference would be a ban on uploading these videos to YouTube, FB, etc. Without this kind of exposure, these wanker ‘heroes’ would slink back into the night. This would actually be quite easy to implement, but of course these sites have no incentive to do so. These drone stunt make for great clickbait.
Aaaahhh the old “freedom of speech” thing. I do agree 100% 172driver but it makes me smile that some people flooded this forum with offensive junk just to make a point about free speech. This comes to mind and the video hosting sites would resist such a requirement as an assault on freedom of expression. Next would be videos of driving over the speed limit. You can get software which recognises nudity etc but this would be impossible to police.
Google doesn’t carry a lot of illegal stuff on firearms and modifications thereof. But google make money from advertisers buying adwords, whereas the video hosting sites make money from clicks on adverts they host. Like forums that carry adverts, they positively want controversial material because that brings in the most people.
The owner wants his drone back because it is almost impossible to get one flying without leaving some DNA on it. I think eventually technology (drones) will come which will be able to track drones’ thermal image and chase it back to the owner. Then, 5-10 year jail sentences will be effective enough because these people are just antisocial twats; they aren’t career criminals.
I don’t think DNA evidence is as strong as you may suspect. If the person has never been in trouble with the police, then DNA matching to find the perp won’t even be possible (because the offender’s DNA fingerprint won’t be on record). If we went down a route of requiring every UK resident to submit their DNA for the database – well, DNA fingerprinting techniques aren’t that precise – if you had 65 million people on record it would end up being a match for hundreds of different people. DNA testing isn’t a bitwise comparison of base pairs that can point a finger at a particular individual – you have to also have other evidence. Not to mention you could quite easily have the DNA from many uninvolved individuals on the drone (imagine a drone built from scratch – you’d potentially have DNA fragments from anyone who handled the parts).
The current story on DNA matching is you have a suspect and then you confirm on a DNA matching test, you simply can’t just get DNA trace and search on a “DNA database” if such thing exist: cost/memory are still very high (in the 2K$/1GB region, the cost was 1m$ 10 years ago and 1b$ 15 years ago) compared to finger prints (20$ and few KBytes)
That’s true, but lots of cases do get solved because somebody related to the suspect does end up having their DNA sampled because they got picked up by the police for something. Then they go around interviewing the relatives… in most cases there are loads of clues once you narrow it down so much. Of course if this guy is a total loner who has no known family, or his family never lived in the UK, that won’t work…
I am sure the police don’t have my DNA sample but I still would not like them to get my DNA off some drone 
I doubt whoever did this is a total loner. There is a lot of “peer group stimulated behaviour” in this area and probably a number of people know who did it.
Peter wrote:
peer group stimulated behaviour
What is that?
If you ski, think of snowboarders 
Ibra wrote:
you simply can’t just get DNA trace and search on a “DNA database” if such thing exist
Not entirely correct. Here in California, the police recently apprehended a serial killer who had eluded them for decades. Essentially, they ran tests of DNA sampled at ‘cold’ cases against a database of one of the genealogy sites, where you can – voluntarily – upload your data in order to find family members. Bingo! They caught the guy. Interesting aspect to the story: one of the reasons he was able to evade arrest for such a long time is that he himself is an ex-cop. Takes one to catch one….
Interesting, I think they got on that guy more than just his nephew genealogy tests
Gosh too late for me, got my DNA history results back from a famous UK website…
On Gatwick drone case (less high profile than a 20 years serial killer chase), I think you will be able to find more on social media posts/videos or Google map positions logs than what you can get from ancestry databases
