It’s a job for the police. If someone is intentionally harming others in a way that can cause lasting damage, then they need to be dragged in front of a court.
In the US you have a second amendment but in Germany we wouldn’t have any issue with simply outlawing or restricting strong laser pointers in a way that prevents kids from possessing them if there’s political will to do so.
The Second Amendment has generally not been held to prohibit banning or restricting dangerous objects that are not weapons, nor weapons without plausible self-defense functionality, nor narrow classes of weapon that are popular for reasons other than self-defense. It definitely wouldn’t prohibit slapping age limits on the things. (California, where I live, has a ban dating from the Eighties on many martial arts/”ninja” weapons, probably because they were thought at the time to be inordinately popular among young people. Take this how you will; I feel it’s kind of a joke, personally.)
That said, I feel this would be adequately covered by existing law without throwing bans around—aiming a laser pointer powerful enough to blind at someone would, at minimum, qualify as assault.
In Belgium, laser pointers are already illegal. This hasn’t stopped anyone from possessing them and in fact the only time i actually owned them was when I was a kid.
Just to point out that while it probably should be a job for the police, that’s not going to be a very viable solution in the short term.
Given the many different risks towards we are exposed, how many people suffer permanent damage per year due to laser pointer injuries? Is there really a case that we have to do much more?
To me this simply doesn’t seem like the kind of risk that our existing political structures are ill equipped to handle.
It’s a job for the police. If someone is intentionally harming others in a way that can cause lasting damage, then they need to be dragged in front of a court.
In the US you have a second amendment but in Germany we wouldn’t have any issue with simply outlawing or restricting strong laser pointers in a way that prevents kids from possessing them if there’s political will to do so.
The Second Amendment has generally not been held to prohibit banning or restricting dangerous objects that are not weapons, nor weapons without plausible self-defense functionality, nor narrow classes of weapon that are popular for reasons other than self-defense. It definitely wouldn’t prohibit slapping age limits on the things. (California, where I live, has a ban dating from the Eighties on many martial arts/”ninja” weapons, probably because they were thought at the time to be inordinately popular among young people. Take this how you will; I feel it’s kind of a joke, personally.)
That said, I feel this would be adequately covered by existing law without throwing bans around—aiming a laser pointer powerful enough to blind at someone would, at minimum, qualify as assault.
(IANAL, though.)
Oh, and XiXiDu is German too.
In Belgium, laser pointers are already illegal. This hasn’t stopped anyone from possessing them and in fact the only time i actually owned them was when I was a kid.
Just to point out that while it probably should be a job for the police, that’s not going to be a very viable solution in the short term.
Given the many different risks towards we are exposed, how many people suffer permanent damage per year due to laser pointer injuries? Is there really a case that we have to do much more?
To me this simply doesn’t seem like the kind of risk that our existing political structures are ill equipped to handle.