As one of my professional laser friends said yesterday, "The law is already on the books, to require a variance for a display or entertainment laser, in public. All you need to do is consider a pointer a display or entertainment laser, which it is. All you need then is enforcement."
Btw, variances are free, now. There is no age requirement on a variance.
What I think will happen, If your under 18, I'm sorry, but your parents will have to buy you the completed unit.
What you assemble in your basement and do not introduce into business or trade is your own business. Up until recently, a requirement for ham radio licenses in most countries was a requirement that you assemble, on your own, some form of radio receiver, even if it only had 10 parts. This did a very good job of keeping out the wanttabes.
The gripe of most people outside the pointer community is the sales of a 500 mW device to a person with no instruction or morals. I can show you the case of a 21 year old fellow in Cleveland who thought nothing of buying a very hot pointer in Canada, crossed the border with it. He then spent a evening illuminating aircraft, including Lifeflight and Police Helicopters, from a road along a runway. Along with with three of his friends from a moving car. He was a convicted felon, and this sent him back to prison.
That is the problem, not the folks who want to learn, but the bad apples who see a youtube video, say I need one of those, and have NO idea what they are doing.
Sadly, it is possibly in the best interest of the pointer fans, to restrict sales to 5 mW or less to the general public, under the existing rules, and thus keep use to the few who can truely respect the safety requirements.
Of course the fact that the government is operating under outdated gas laser rules with no effective enforcement has not helped. Border enforcement is done by Customs, and with the huge loads of containers coming in, its hard to inspect for big worries, let alone a box of pointers or illegal laser projectors. Gas lasers greater then 10-20 mW henes required 1-2 Kilowatts of input power. Portable ment a generator or long extension cord. Not a pair of AA batteries.
The issue is, as power grows more and more, is when does the major "incident" occur, that seals the deal.
Lasers are starting to follow "Moore's Law" on power and cost, and that is going to lead to trouble. That and the fact that all China cares about is your dollars, not your safety and laws. Chinese profit on these things has to be about 20:1. Its a cakewalk for them, because they do not have the environmental rules and labor costs the US or most of the rest of the world does. The person assembling your pointer would be lucky to make the equivalent of 4,000$ a year. Probably 85% of that goes to their baseline cost of living, ie apartment, food, and transport. That leaves 600$ a year for discretionary things, clothes, travel, gifts, children, computers, cameras, etc.
Government is reactionary. It will listen if you come up with a solution now, but once the dam breaks, and it gets into the media, nothing you say will help the pointer cause. Time to be proactive folks, and proactive means keeping these devices in the hands of those who respect them.
Laser pointers greater then a few milliwatts are starting to become something between a drug and a gun.
Think about it,
Steve
