This is what ruins it for us!

[tornado33]

Yes I have no intention of handing in my 100 milliwatt laser if they are declared illegal.
By the way I bet the govt. isnt aware that inside every cheap $40 DVD burner lies a massive 200+ milliwatt red laser diode, capable of igniting matches and throwing out a visible beam (rare for a red laser). Also, though much more expensive, inside every Blu Ray burner lies a very much more potent blue laser diode, rated up to 250miliwatt. These can be made into laser pointers by anyone with some basic electronics experience. So if importing them is stopped, a nice lucrative black market underground for ultra powerful laser pointers will appear. I should say that a 250milliwatt blue laser would be very nasty if mis used, the light is much more energetic and more sharply focused.

I also saw on ebay once an infra red 7 watt laser diode, that, using a special frequency doubling crystal, one could make a blue laser with a power of over 3 full WATTS!

Theres also plans to make use of the ever more efficient solid state laser diode technology to put infra red lasers onboard the Joint Strike Fighters in the US, of a huge 100 Kw capacity, capable of destroying targets, but they are concerned that if fired at something like a car on the ground, reflected IR light from shiny parts of it could blind people 100 km away!

[programmer]

Your 100mW laser is already illegal. Also, I'm not sure what your argument is. Bombs are not legal, but can be easily put together. Firearms can be bought on the black market. Doesn't mean everything should be legal because they can be obtained by other means. It's a bit like in the other laser thread, people asking where they can get a laser before they are banned. Even if you can buy one now, what are you going to do with it once it is banned? I'm only putting this forward for the sake of friendly discussion I'm all for astronomers having lasers. I have one myself.