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- Jul 14, 2010
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OK I know some here are gonna hate me for bringing up the subject but I still wanted to get other's thoughts on this.
Lasers have always had an inherent safety margin due to their nature, but as the Arctic Spyder III and other lasers have recently been "released" this has become something greater to consider as more and more common folk with no real experience with lasers beyond a $5 red laser and a kitten gain access to high powered lasers.
Now, to the point, I bring up defensive first simply because I don't feel that these are powerful enough to be used as an offensive weapon commonly. Consider this scenario...
You own a high powered laser and someone breaks into your house to cause some sort of harm. You do not own a gun, but you know what your laser can do. Assuming you have some level of aim in such a situation, you might chose to use the laser to blind your assailant to prevent any action. Maybe the attacker starts thrashing or won't leave at this point, then you could attempt to use the laser's ability to burn skin to try and get the assailant to leave. This incident shows that your laser could act as a potential non-lethal deterrent. Of course there are 5 billion ways this could go horribly wrong, but you encounter the same issues with any break in/weapon scenario.
Now offensively you could use the same two characteristics of the laser to do some level of harm to someone, but I dunno how effective this would be at the 500mW to 1W level. I guess both instances have about the same shock effect. Question is how many people would consider using a laser over a gun or taser.
Of course because this is now an honest consideration for anyone, I do think that the powers that be are becoming more aware of the potential uses of such a device. I think the media attention is a good thing because the public can then begin to formulate approaches to how best to deal with this. I think that at some point these high powered PORTABLE lasers will be classified as a weapon and regulated as such. I know that enthusiasts will not like this, but I can't imagine anyone thinking that the current status of lasers would remain as is.
What does everyone else think?
Lasers have always had an inherent safety margin due to their nature, but as the Arctic Spyder III and other lasers have recently been "released" this has become something greater to consider as more and more common folk with no real experience with lasers beyond a $5 red laser and a kitten gain access to high powered lasers.
Now, to the point, I bring up defensive first simply because I don't feel that these are powerful enough to be used as an offensive weapon commonly. Consider this scenario...
You own a high powered laser and someone breaks into your house to cause some sort of harm. You do not own a gun, but you know what your laser can do. Assuming you have some level of aim in such a situation, you might chose to use the laser to blind your assailant to prevent any action. Maybe the attacker starts thrashing or won't leave at this point, then you could attempt to use the laser's ability to burn skin to try and get the assailant to leave. This incident shows that your laser could act as a potential non-lethal deterrent. Of course there are 5 billion ways this could go horribly wrong, but you encounter the same issues with any break in/weapon scenario.
Now offensively you could use the same two characteristics of the laser to do some level of harm to someone, but I dunno how effective this would be at the 500mW to 1W level. I guess both instances have about the same shock effect. Question is how many people would consider using a laser over a gun or taser.
Of course because this is now an honest consideration for anyone, I do think that the powers that be are becoming more aware of the potential uses of such a device. I think the media attention is a good thing because the public can then begin to formulate approaches to how best to deal with this. I think that at some point these high powered PORTABLE lasers will be classified as a weapon and regulated as such. I know that enthusiasts will not like this, but I can't imagine anyone thinking that the current status of lasers would remain as is.
What does everyone else think?
