Drone Law

As my last post was about drone delivery systems and one of the points I made was about the risk of people shooting down the drones, I felt compelled to expand on this when this morning I stumbled upon this article.  The Federal Aviation Administration has stated that the act of shooting a drone out of the sky is a federal crime.  As such, the maximum penalty for such an act is a twenty year prison sentence.  This decision is based in an existing law that rules it a federal crime to damage an aircraft.  As drones are still aircraft, albeit unmanned ones, the FAA says that damaging a drone is akin to damaging an aircraft and is therefore a federal offense.  The specific law being referred to by the FAA is Title 18 Part I Chapter 2 Section 32 which states

"Whoever willfully sets fire to, damages, destroys, disables, or wrecks any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States or any civil aircraft used, operated, or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years or both." 

Under this same law, a person could receive up to a five year sentence for "threatening a drone or a drone operator".  However, there is yet to be a court precedent set to determine the legitimacy of this application of the law, but there appears that there is a strong case for it.