October 3, 2017. Remarks From President Marco Rubio on the casualties in Oregon, resulting from a dad accidentally flying a drone into a full jet engine.
“My heart is broken, but there is nothing I can do.”
In my seven months as President, I have already had to stand before you four times giving remarks such as this one. Once again, another father eager to impress his children has accidentally flown a personal drone into a jet engine, killing all 255 innocent people on board.
I want everyone to know I wish I could do something to prevent tragedies such as this. However, drones hold a special place in our nation’s history.
Yes, our nation has a long, two-year history of allowing unfettered access to drones. Just because they are now being misused doesn’t mean we should move to incrementally limit their use. That would spit in the face of our Constitution.
What Constitutional right do I speak of? Back in February 2015, the FAA published one of our nation’s most sacred documents: the Unmanned Aerial Systems Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. This document suggested no limits on people who could fly small drones. The moment this proposal was proposed, all Americans knew this was an unchangeable document, never to be influenced by changes in lifestyle or reality.
To water down those regulations would challenge the foresight of one of America’s most beloved founding fathers, FAA Administrator from 2013-2016 Michael Huerta. Yes, I fired this great man when I became President, but only because my friend Lou Spumoni really wanted the job.
I am not suggesting we do nothing. A good use of our time would be to find new fathers who seem especially proud of their kids, and therefore more likely to try and impress them with a drone. Then we should lock them up. Such abhorrent mental behavior has no place in our society.
Always remember, it’s people who crash drones into planes. When a drone gets sucked into a jet engine, it makes no sense to think a drone had something to do with it.
Also, there are also far too many drones out there for regulation to have any significant impact. After all, there are more drones this year than there were last year. So, that’s a lot.
As I say each time we see one of these incidents where an amateur drone enthusiast takes out an airplane, our thoughts and prayers are enough. While they do nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America, thoughts and prayers let the victim’s family know we won’t trample inalienable American rights by putting limitations on who can fly machines that have proven to be quite dangerous.
God Bless America.