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Get your lasers while you can

There are some real idiots out there.

I'm talking about the dorks who think it's clever to shine a high-powered laser at an aircraft, especially when that craft is in a critical phase of its flight -- on takeoff or approach for landing.

The actions of these fools now threaten all Kiwis' freedom to buy and use half-decent lasers for sensible purposes - such as experimentation and learning about the effects of coherent light.

Right now, we're one of an ever-decreasing list of nations that allow private individuals to purchase and use lasers, pretty much without restriction (plainly dangerous actions notwithstanding) but that freedom is now very much under threat.

Pilots are up in arms, claiming that the combination of freely-available solid-state lasers and idiots with half a brain is a potentially lethal one -- and they maybe right.

There is a long list of "incidents" involving the use of lasers against aircraft and it would appear that as the general IQ of the population continues to decline due to over-breeding amongst the dimmest groups, the situation looks likely to worsen.

The result will be an inevitable ban on the importation and sale of anything other than a trivially powerful laser.

Of course one could argue "who really needs a 200mW green laser anyway?"

The answer would have to be "not very many people" -- but by the same token, it could be asked "who needs a car capable of 2.5 times the maximum legal speed limit?"

Freedoms are not about "needs".

If we were to ban everything we don't actually "need" then the "verboten" list would be so massive as to be unmanageable.

We don't need TV. We don't need music. We don't need recreational boats. We don't need fast-food.

The crazy thing is that *all* of the above call many times more deaths each year than these laser pointers that are likely to be banned -- so what the hell is going on?

In advance of the imminent ban, I'm going to order myself a couple of decent lasers -- not because I have an immediate use for them but because I imagine that at some time in the future I probably will.

Whether it's setting up a long-distance point-to-point communications link, pointing out celestial bodies to friends of an evening, doing some CNC-based laser-cutting of very thin materials or something else -- makes no difference. Unless I buy the lasers now, I will inevitably have to do without -- or face a mountain of bureaucracy, red-tape and extra expense in order to prove myself a "fit and proper person" to obtain such a device.

To be fair, I'm not so sure that your average teenager ought to be able to just pick up a 200mW laser without any kind of restriction. These things will blind you (or someone else) in (quite literally) the blink of an eye -- if mis-used. However -- just as a kitchen knife can kill when abused, we have to trust people to be sensible, or we'd end up banning all sharp objects, wouldn't we?

I'd like some feedback from readers on this subject...

Ought >10mW lasers be banned outright or perhaps given an R18 restriction?

And how about those cars which will easily do 250kph? Do we "need" them?

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