If there is one thing my long-suffering editor likes, it’s when I drone on about personal freedom in our great state of Colorado (Ed: well…) And so when I did what I do every morning (and you should too), and connected to ColoradoPolitics.com, I took in several interesting stories before one really caught my eye. It was a story about the city of Thornton exploring additional local regulations on flying drones. Now, full disclosure, I have a drone, one of the early models, and being a red-blooded American male, I like gadgets in general and drones in particular. I haven’t flown it lately, but I like to think that I can get back to it someday. So naturally, I wondered what the good folks in Thornton were proposing.

It seems city leaders there are mulling several options to limit drone flights, which include restrictions on where they can fly – all the proposals limit drone flights over city-owned streets, highways, sidewalks, streams, or ditches. One of the proposals would also ban drones from parks, open spaces, and reservoirs. In other words, you can fly them in your front yard, but don’t fly out over the sidewalk or the street, or you might face a fine of up to $2,600.

I’ve often written about freedom and what limits thereof by the government are acceptable. I’ve noted that we all have a libertarian streak, that varies in width in most folks. But as silly as drones can make a grown man look (and yes, we look silly flying those things), what right does the government have to limit my fun?

Well, lots, as it turns out.

Back when I was teaching political science at the AF Academy, I’d often point out to my students that the real test of governance is not when a basic right or freedom is unchallenged. Rather, it is when two or more such rightsare inconflict– that’s where the sticky wickets are. (For the kids out there, a sticky wicket is a wicket that does not easily fall to the pitch. For the adult readers out there, a wicket is part of the game of Cricket. For everyone else other than my many, many readers in Europe, Cricket is a game, I think, that people from the UK play a lot. It involves a ball and a bat and for some reason, lots of white slacks. It’s possible I’m getting off track…Ed: yes, you are).  

How much regulation of our lives should the government have? This question is one of many that were addressed at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and like so many of those key issues, it remains unsolved. And as technology continues to advance, these questions will become more and more difficult. 

To be clear, drones can be intrusive and irritating. I once thought, for example, it would be great fun to fly my drone up to the window through which my lovely wife was looking. As it turns out, apparently wives don’t like 4-bladed flying helicopters that sound like 10,000 angry bees flying right up to them. Who could have guessed that? I did check with my neighbors before flying over their property, even going so far as to show them the drone up close. They were all nice folks, and they didn’t mind, so I had fun, and I could also check if that frisbee was still up on the roof across the street.

Most “smart” drones (the ones that are not $19.95 at the gas station) have smart technology. Mine, for example, has a GPS system and it won’t even turn on, let alone fly, if the drone is within 5 miles of an airport. It is most certainly true that there are boneheaded drone pilots out there who do stupid things and those things should be punished harshly.

That said, is it fair for the leaders in Thornton to, say, ban drones from parks? Legendary U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once remarked that the purpose of the Constitution is to keep the government off the backs of regular folks. A previous Supreme Court member is said to have remarked that our system of justice was to ensure that your right to swing your arm ended where my nose begins. The key question, of course, is whose nose is where. 

I wish the city leaders in Thornton the very best of luck in teasing out this issue.  If they want an aerial shot of the debate, I know a couple of drone pilots who can help out.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.