Guy who lasered airplanes.. appropriate punishment?

[Falls City Beer]

Originally Posted by Roy Tucker

I think the guy did a stupid and dangerous thing (or things, I think he probably did it more than once) and then just panicked.

Guy plays around with his laser, says "wheeeeee, look, I can shine this on airplanes and see a green dot". Probably realizes its not a smart thing but what the hell, I'll stop if it gets anywhere serious. Next thing he knows, helicopters are flying overhead, FBI shows up on his doorstep, guy loses his mind, panicks, denies it first, then blames it on his daughter, and then finally admits to it. All very stupid, immature, foolish, and dangerous behavior.

I hope they prosecute him to the appropriate degree of the law, scare the absolute bejesus out of the guy, and splash it all over the news. It sounds like this may be a growing trend and the general population needs to understand the severity of the danger this causes, that it is an extremely serious and dangerous matter, and not something to come anywhere close to.

But in the end after all that, I don't think this guy is a criminal and I don't think he deserves getting locked up for 25 years. Fine him, put him on probation, do some community service like help educate people on the hazards of what he did, something like that. I don't think anything is gained by him serving hard time.

FWIW, about 5-7 years ago, the big thing with kids were the red laser pointers. For about a summer, it was all the rage for kids to have these and shine them on all kinds of objects. My kids had a couple and we'd goof around with them shining them in the back yard on the lot line, make the cat chase the red dot, and other stupid stuff like that. I told the kids to never shine it any anyone, cars, etc.

Pretty soon, kids started taking them to school, shining them on teachers, shining them on the screen at movie theatres, taking them to the mall, shined them on cops, and that's when the stuff hit the fan. Because it looked just like a laser pointer for a rifle. They got banned after that. The batteries wore out on ours and after hearing about what was happening with them, we allowed them to die a quiet death in the Tucker house.

I completely agree.