but if you make a youtube stunt that hurts nobody you can get 20 years in prison and the FAA acts like you besmirched the stellar reputation of the aviation industry.
It's rather irritating. The law was made with a flexible range of punishments to permit the judge of any particular case to use discretion when determining an appropriate punishment. The maximum permitted is thus rather high. So now every article written about the subject lazily cites "up to 20 years", and thus everyone reading those articles gets the impression that he's actually likely to get 20 years for this incident.
I point my car at a wall and drive into it on purpose for views... And suddenly that's a possibility of jail time? That's crazy.
There needs to be a minimum number of permitted years when death is involved with clear negligence. Sadly there isn't any our court systems use max permitted years to pick and choose who they can punish. Dumb kid who crashes his plane on purpose versus safety inspector who Actually killed hundreds of people?
There is a clear disconnect here.
And anyway, fines only penalize poor people. Someone who can afford to AIRLIFT A PLANE and disassemble it would not be disincentivized by a fine.
It's not bizarre at all. The bizarre part here is your stringing of logic to try to transform this into a crime related to murder.
First off he crashed the plane deliberately into empty forest. There's no hikers in the place he crashed it, he knows that.
Second small planes or cars don't explode in a ball of flames when they crash. That's just movie magic. What actually happens is the car or plane becomes metal debris. That's it. A fire and a crashed car or small plane are completely orthogonal concepts. Might as well arrest people who make bouncing balls because the bouncing ball might accidentally smack the trigger of a gun and kill someone.
What's bizarre here is your post says I'm trying to completely eliminate rule of law when I never said that. Why lie straight to my face? What's the point? It's bizarre. You're the one twisting the rationale to fit your convenient narrative. Please be more logical with your reasoning.
The punishment should fit the crime. A huge fine and revoke the pilots license. That's it. Ruining his life with jail time does not fit the crime at all. If he's rich, then increase the fine... that simple.