Permanent blindness from laser abuse at Burning Man

I had a similar experience once. Girl wanted a picture with the laser... also did not let her hold it. Her friend is taking the picture, she grabbed my hand and flashed the laser down on and over her friend!

This is after I explained how dangerous it was, why I would not let her handle it, 2-3 times.

Thankfully no harm done, but if she had hit an eye it would have been bad. Very very bad.

Now I do still carry around a laser once in a while, but it has a built in non removable diffraction grating, and none of the beams exceed 3mw.