Laser's for a defensive weapon?

[Lostinspace]

I recently saw a hand held laser my friend bought for like $40.  It was super powerful and made me think if anyone uses these or has thought of these for home or self defense.  Seems like you could pretty well blind someone with one of these powerful lasers and they're silent and have a long range and you have unlimited "shots" as long as you have batteries or recharge them.  Just wondering on your thoughts.

[Darts2116]

I think the military has that type of things for road blocks. They also have a paintball type weapon to hit the windows of approaching cars as a waringing

[Scratch]

Permanently blinding a criminal.... Sounds a lawsuit waiting to happen to me.

[Hodgie]

I'm going to stick with 9mm and 12 buck shot.

[CG]

Nice thing about a hand held light defensive weapon,

The guy with a gun knows where to aim.

[Meshuggah12]

This would not be effective against targets on foot.  They can simply look away and move a different direction while giving your position away.

It is somewhat more effective against targets in vehicles who need to be stopped from traveling in a specific direction.  People are forced to look in the direction of travel so there is more exposure unless they stop the vehicle or go off the road.

This is even more effective towards air targets.  Can be used to disrupt visual control and also can be effective against manual optical and computer controlled optical based navigation equipment. 

Parascopes, electronic eyes, night vision, or even disrupt some types of automatic HUD tracking.

There are many weapons and countermeasures used by the military that involve lasers.  The most effective use in the home or general self defense is a laser sight on your firearm. 

[Toad]

You could either aim for probably the smallest target on the human body, and hope the BG doesn't close his eyes, turn, or duck, -or- for those in reality, count the holes 00buckshot makes in a 12" spread.