Michael Gardner was doing what he does every week — flying his drone over a client’s house near Athens, Alabama, to shoot real estate content — when a single gunshot ended the session. The blast brought his DJI Mavic 4 Pro down, and the operator of Deep South Aerial Photography is now working with police and the Federal Aviation Administration to find whoever pulled the trigger.
“So I was shooting a house for a client in Athens off of Lindsay Lane. And I got my drone up there doing my normal thing like I do. All of a sudden, I hear a gunshot,” Gardner told local news station WAFF. “I look in my controller and my video feed is going crazy and it is crashing to the ground.”
The drone crash-landed out of sight, and Gardner couldn’t locate it on his own. It took two days before someone else stumbled across what WAFF describes as a $5,000 rig. This was no toy, either — the Mavic 4 Pro is DJI’s triple-lens flagship camera drone:
- 100MP Hasselblad camera with a 4/3 CMOS sensor
- 6K/60fps HDR video recording
- Dual tele cameras alongside the main unit
- 360° Infinity Gimbal and omnidirectional obstacle sensing
Omnidirectional obstacle sensing, unfortunately, does not cover bullets.
Gardner says the hostility isn’t new to him. “I’ve heard of people’s drones getting shot down. I have been threatened to have mine shot down by property owners not liking it flying over their property,” he said. “But one thing that they don’t realize is they don’t own the airspace above the tallest blade of grass in their yard.”
The law is on his side. Under FAA rules, shooting a drone out of the air is illegal — the agency says the act poses a “significant safety hazard.” Gardner explained why in vivid terms: “If you shoot a drone, it can become a flaming fireball in the sky, more or less, because that battery punctures, it will ignite and it will catch on fire.” And if that burning aircraft lands on someone’s roof, he added, “the person who shot the drone down can be held responsible.”
The shooter, if identified, could face a civil penalty from the FAA on top of criminal charges from law enforcement. Gardner is speaking to the FAA in Birmingham and working on a police report. There is precedent for consequences: back in 2024, a 60-year-old man in upstate New York was arrested for shooting down his neighbor’s drone with a shotgun.
For working aerial photographers, the takeaway is depressingly simple: the sky above a listing is legal airspace, but not everyone on the ground got the memo.
