Turns out, those drone hunting permits that Colorado wisely declined to issue earlier this year man not have done much good anyway. As this video shows, hitting a drone on the wing is really, really hard. Even if you bring fully automatic weapons to the party.
This informal experiment was conducted at the Big Sandy Shoot (a shooting event geared towards machine gun owners) in Arizona earlier this month. A quarter-mile-long row of shooters were invited to fire upon a small, commercial R/C aircraft from a distance of a few hundred yards—though as you can see, they didn't do much beyond waste ammo. The drone was able to make numerous passes over several shooters without sustaining any sort of significant damage, during both the day shoot and again later that night.
"I'm sure to those who have never shot a machine gun outside of Call of Duty, it looks like it would be easy to shoot these down," writes video uploader TAOFLEDERMAUS on Youtube. "The vital components of the plane like the engine, battery, receiver, fuel tank, etc. are very small. The main body of the plane is pretty tough and can take numerous hits without affecting it."
So if you ever find yourself in need of downing a drone, don't try to do it with a machine gun. Pick something with a bit better accuracy and range instead. [Aviationist]