"Model Aircraft" drones are useful. Not just a little. They can save lives, catch bad guys, help put out fires, improve crops, climb safely to heights and places dangerous to people.

They can also be flown by jack-asses who endanger other aircraft and people on the ground.

Our society has a mechanism to deal with this problem: licensing. You can't drive to the airport and go fly a plane without a pilots license. You can't operate a car without a drivers license. You can't pick up a ham radio and start transmitting without a ham license. You can't carry a concealed firearm (in Colorado) without a license.

All of these things are potentially dangerous and disruptive. Everyone would like to know that the people engaging in these activities are at least minimally competent and accountable. Licensing is apparently working for cars, planes, ham radios and concealed firearms. They've been licensed activities for years and society still functions pretty well.

Let's do the same thing with "drones" and "first person view" flying. The vast majority of pilots aren't looking to cause mayhem. Quite the contrary, FPV pilots are pioneering technologies that will help police safely chase down fleeing criminals, find lost people in the woods, inspect power plants, bridges, power lines, oil fields. Let the hobbyists innovate. Let them build fantastic tools to enable this bright future.

Rather than ban FPV flying, define a licensing path to ensure practitioners are informed, competent and accountable. Persons unwilling to do the work to gain a license can be subject to penalties similar to driving without a license.

Drones are far too useful to encumber with outright bans. They are too inexpensive and easy to build to realistically suppress. Provide a legal path for responsible "model aircraft" pilots.

(I posted the above to the FAA Docket #FAA-2014-0396-0001 comments on www.regulations.gov. There were a very healthy 30,105 comments last I checked.)