If we have laser lights, what holds us back from developing laser guns, like in Star Wars?

Answer 1

Lasers use an immense amount of energy, especially lasers that can do any real damage. Due to the huge battery size, it would be impractical in most cases to build a laser "handgun." There actually are designs out there (which work) to build laser devices which are fairly small and can burn through paper or wood (or even thin sheets of metal) but the fact remains that either the battery will die out within a few shots or one must have it continuously plugged into a socket, which ruins the portability. Development of low-power consumption Free Electron Lasers (FEL's) is constantly making the design for a very powerful laser smaller and smaller but frankly, technology isn't even the issue with developing laser guns. Its more because there's not need for them, that they're not being developed. Its far cheaper (at present) to expend money on conventional weaponry (and the accompanying ammunition) then to have R&D on an "exotic" weapon like a laser handgun. After all, a bullet is just as (if not more) effective than a laser on most targets and is much cheaper to produce.

Answer 2

Because the lasers we have today are only "low capacity" meaning they're not the type where if you project a beam towards a steel block for example, it will not instantenously cut it in half. Instead, the lasers of today require time to heat up the target in order to penetrate it. Maybe in the future the lasers will be able to instantly vapourize solid / liquid matter into gaseous form making the job easier. Although, it should be noted that these "low capacity" lasers of today has a severe impact on living tissue and cells as they are not made of the same material as steel. :)

Answer 3

exactly, we have lasers that can emit light. we dont know how to fire a laser out of a hand held gun and make a small explosion whenever it hits something. if u notice all of the strong lasers are huge objects in laboratories, and even those just heat up the object over time.

Answer 4

According to one of my son's books, it might be the scarce availability of Tibanna gas from Bespin (in the case of the DH-17 blaster pistol) or perhaps no one has yet discovered the cooling agent freelol (in the case of the E-11 blaster rifle). :-)

Answer 5

Portable energy source.

Answer 6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon