Animal Rights Group Says Drone Shot Down
21st February 2012
A remote-controlled aircraft owned by an animal rights group was reportedly shot down near Broxton Bridge Plantation Sunday near Ehrhardt, S.C.
Imagine that.
Steve Hindi, president of SHARK (SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness), said his group was preparing to launch its Mikrokopter drone to video what he called a live pigeon shoot on Sunday when law enforcement officers and an attorney claiming to represent the privately-owned plantation near Ehrhardt tried to stop the aircraft from flying.
“It didn’t work; what SHARK was doing was perfectly legal,” Hindi said in a news release. “Once they knew nothing was going to stop us, the shooting stopped and the cars lined up to leave.”
In other words, they were a bunch of shits devoted to sticking their noses into other people’s business — their citizenship may be American, but their hearts are European.
He said the animal rights group decided to send the drone up anyway.
“Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out,” Hindi said in the release. “As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon slaughter, they had shot down our copter.”
Quelle domage.
He claimed the shooters were “in tree cover” and “fled the scene on small motorized vehicles.”
Laughing like loons all the way, I’m sure.
“This was SHARK’s first encounter with the Broxton Bridge Plantation, but it will certainly not be the last,” Hindi said in the release. “We are already making plans for a considerably upscaled action in 2013.”
Perhaps the next time higher caliber weapons will make their appearance. I should think a drone an even more challenging target than a clay pigeon. Just sayin’.
February 22nd, 2012 at 07:44
Live pigeon shoots are legal only in Pennsylvania, not in South Carolina; that’s why the “cars all lined up to leave” once they learned that it would be filmed.
Since the hunt was illegal, why do you have a problem with someone flying a drone to film it? These people were not “sticking their noses into other people’s business”, they were seeking to prevent an act in transgression of the law.
By your line of reasoning, nobody should ever report an illegal act unless they themselves are the victims. Eyewitnesses should “keep their noses out of other people’s business” by not reporting either witnessed or suspected burglary, assault, rape, theft, vandalism, or any other crime. That’s neither American nor European in character, that’s just callousness and indiference.
You denigrate the animal activists’ perfectly legal action of flying and filming, yet applaud the hunter’s illegal action (willful destruction of property).
Is that how conservatives think? Illegal actions are okay if they target groups whose politics you disagree with?
February 22nd, 2012 at 13:52
There’s at least one shooting range near Houston that has a shooting event in which they have drones that fly by and you shoot at them with shotguns. My neighbors went to participate, but something else was going on and they go tied up with that. Now I can see where it has a practical application.
February 22nd, 2012 at 17:03
“A practical application”…to evade the law.
Well, that’s practical, I guess. Not ethical, but practical.