Can I just say as a gun owner: 95% of gun owners are utterly insane. I just read a piece arguing that a laser on a handgun works as an "effective deterrent" because "would-be attackers... will notice a red or green dot on their body and will probably think twice before coming any closer."

In order to do this you need to train a handgun on somebody without firing it for long enough for them to notice that their body has a laser on it and make the conscious decision to call off the "attack." If that's going to happen, it's going to happen when you pull a gun on them (spoilers: most people do not call off their "attack" when a deadly weapon gets brandished at them, they go into fight-or-flight mode and come at you harder). This advice is going to get people killed. Laser sights are for you to see where you're aiming, as a supplement to irons or a red-dot. Using them as a threat is a good way to turn a potential robber (that seems to be the most common justification for these "self-defense situations") into a cornered animal fighting for their life in a split second. If you pull a gun on someone, fucking shoot them. This John Wayne bullshit is for cowboys and neo-Nazis - and that's who *I'm* thinking of when I say " attacker." It's unsurprising that the author of this piece of terrible advice cut his teeth doing war crimes to unarmed Iraqi and Afghani civilians.