As an American I can tell you we fret about many trivial things and are lax regarding the profound, but there are indeed idiots that fly these things without much consideration. They are dangerous in a way, but I feel this is more newsworthy as an item of media paranoia than a serious peril to anything. Keep in mind this sort of thing is a way for politicians to "get tough" on a perceived ambitious threat --that, oh by the way, just so happens to be an industry that doesn't have any lobbyist dollars to tell them otherwise...or any type of social traction. It's a soft target. That's the pragmatic political reason these quads are destined to be regulated drastically. If for some reason the nomenclature for these things was "Remote Controlled Model Helicopters" or "RCMH's" rather than the loaded word "Drones" I doubt this would even be much of a public interest story, to be honest.