1. The lasers were offense one and the shutting of the door was offense two — either are a direct threat to bodily integrity and would justify a violent response, IMO. This is one time where I might want a Taurus Judge.

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   1. I’d rather have an effective pistol….in my pocket, and using it on these punks…self defensed.

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2. The positive is the cost of laser eyewear has gone down. But before anyone rushes out to buy it, we need to confirm the ranges that need to be covered. If they’re using many of the high-powered lasers, your $200 laser eye protection will be useless. I know the style/wavelength protection used for aircrew in the USAF is a four figure cost minimum from what I could find when I was in.

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   1. Re “useless”, I don’t know about that. Edmund Optical lists many models, one of which is LS02, rated at OD > 7 in the range 180-532 nm. That covers the green mentioned here as well as blue, and with that OD it will effectively protect against anything handheld.
      If you’re talking OD of 4, that’s a bit less margin; if someone is toting around lasers in the 1 watt range it wouldn’t be good enough.

      1. Don’t forget that the common green laser pointers are near-IR diode-pumped solid-state lasers with either poor quality or no IR filters.

         So you need the 800nm and 1000nm range, too.

         2

      2. I the math on a 5 watt green laser is OD 3.5 for continuous wave.

         So an OD6 or OD7 should provide adequate protection enough to escape the situation.

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      3. Nominally, OD3 is rated for a 1-W CW laser in the visible. I would bump it to OD4 for the extra margin of safety.

         The issue here is if several lase you at the same time.

3. We should counter with lasers of our own…weapon mounted.

   4

   1. At the least -the brightest(300 lumen +) flashlight you can find. I carry a 300 lumen bushnell for everyday stuff and a 650 lumen one in my pocket. Oh and stay the bleep away from areas these bleep bleepin bleeps hang out.

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4. I don’t think the green lasers commonly available are in Watt territory, but there are multi-Watt blue lasers around, relatively cheap. Pretty much have to protect against both.
   The cheap green lasers are actually a multi-wavelength threat: the visible output is at 532nm, but typically there’s also a lot of relatively coherent power at 1064nm, unless the supplier spent the extra bucks for an IR-blocking filter, and then there’ll also be some sorter-wavelength IR from the pump diode.
   Any decent anti-532nm glasses should also block the IR, but it’s worth checking.
   My laser glasses deal with UV-through-green, and IR, but, again, I wouldn’t wear them in low light conditions (like, at night) if I needed to see where I was going.
   Incidentally, there are lots of bogus laser safety glasses out there. I bought one of those mini CNC routers plus the laser head for it, and the laser (marked 450nm, 5500mW) came with silly blue-green-tinted plastic glasses that block red light pretty good but seem kinda useless for the laser they came with. Not firing that puppy up until I come up with a proper safety enclosure….

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5. Eric’s comment definitely helpful. Any particular model of glasses you’d recommend? I just spent an hour at Amazon and came away unsure which if any of their laser-safety glasses would be effective. (I also wear normal glasses, so I’d need them to fit over my standard daily-wear glasses). All advice appreciated.

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   1. Unless you wear rather small glasses (as I did three years ago, when I got the laser glasses), the ones I have wouldn’t be suitable; they don’t fit properly over my current, ordinary-sized glasses.
      ‘Tis a challenge; I was recently looking for safety reading glasses, so’s I could safely look at up-close stuff in the workshop, and couldn’t find anything that would work with the current glasses, so I’m stuck with wearing the old glasses under the safety readers.
      (Updating my corrective optics was very much on the list for this spring, but then 2020 happened and a trip to the optometrist started looking like a bad idea. My regular glasses are for distance; for reading, I just slide them down my nose a bit to adjust the focus, but that doesn’t work with most types of protective overwear.)

      1. For safety glasses in the shop, I went to my doc told her I wanted to be able to read dials at arm’s length. Get me a prescription that does that. When to my glasses dealer, told him I wanted safety glasses with brow and side protection.

         I can’t read wall charts but I can read machinery’s handbook and my dials while in my shop.

         I think they cost me less than $100 as I got the special. Ugly but very comfortable and protective.

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   2. I would NOT buy laser safety eyewear from Amazon.

      Go to one of the optics firms that’s been around for a while and have a good reputation. My go-to for basic stuff is ThorLabs, I would trust them for laser eyewear. Newport, Edmunds also.

6. The problem is that there is no way to know which color of laser they are going to use. They are using relatively cheap laser pointers like the ones here:

   https://www.bestlaserpointers.com/best-selling-laser-pointers?u=1595464485183

   Note that this place sells 3 and 5 watt laser pointers for less than $150, and in different colors. So which color glasses do you get?

   Instead, I have decided that the best and most effective defense in an attack like this one is to shoot the closest one with a laser pointer right in the chest. The rest of them are likely going to be too busy running or taking cover to keep trying to blind you. If they aren’t, then shoot the next one. Sooner or later, they will be dissuaded.

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   1. Interesting that these so-called “laser pointers” are advertised as “for burning stuff”.
      We tend not to call for new laws, but this seems like an occasion where invoking the NFA and asking the Feds to classify these crime tools as “destructive devices” would be a Good Thing.
      I do wonder about the specs. One of those crime tools is a “5 watt” blue laser, which is described as using a 7 volt @ 1 amp battery. That implies 70% efficiency. Wikipedia mentions 15% efficiency as a good result. Is that “laser pointer” selling devices rated in ChiCom watts as opposed to real watts?

      1. A 5mW red, is a normal cat play toy, but can still damage your eyes if you don’t blink and turn away

         It is the mW (milliwatt) specifically and NOT the color which determines the burning and heat rating of any particular laser pointer.
         Easy to find 10,000mW for $100
         Just as easy to find 50,000mW for $200

         From Laser Pointer Safety website:
         Eye Hazard

         For direct damage to the eye, the exact severity will be due to many factors: beam power, exposure time, beam/eye relative motion, distance from the laser, retinal injury location, and a person’s physiological/genetic susceptibility to eye injury (some people are more sensitive than others).

         If a person deliberately stares into a laser, even a small 1 milliwatt beam could cause a spot on the retina.

         Safety standards are based on a person blinking and/or turning away from a bright light within 1/4 second. Taking this into account, an accidental exposure to a 5 milliwatt beam is considered tolerable, as long as the person is not overriding their blink reflex. A 1998 Lancet article by Mensah, Vafidis and Marshall states “A 5 mW laser with high retinal irradiance is too weak to cause retinal damage, even if shone in the eye for several seconds.”

         After some point, even blinking and moving isn’t fast enough to prevent injury. As a very rough approximation for laser pointer use, above 10 milliwatts the potential hazard from general use outweighs the benefit of a brighter beam. This does not mean that an injury will occur; just that there starts to be a potential hazard.

         At around 100 milliwatts, an accidental exposure at close range may cause a change to the retina which can be defined as an eye injury. The victim may or may not notice it depending on where the spot is on the retina. The injury may heal after a few days or weeks if the exposure is not too severe. According to the 1998 Lancet article, “Between 100 and 500 mW of diode energy is required to produce a clinically retinal burn.”

         1. “A 5mW red, is a normal cat play toy, but can still damage your eyes if you don’t blink and turn away”
            I can do you one better: a guy I knew in high school managed to damage a retina with a half-milliWatt HeNe laser.
            … He was stoned at the time, and spent a long time staring fixedly into the business end of the “classroom-safe” laser and pondering the cosmic light.

            1. My father worked with HeNe lasers in that power range (metrology single-mode lasers). He didn’t use protective glasses, but he was always careful about the beam and taught all of us to do the same.
               One point he made is that visible laser beams focus down to very small spots, which the focusing reflex of the eye does efficiently. So a surprisingly small amount of power can burn a bunch of tiny spots in the retina. The stoner dude you mentioned probably ended up with a retina that looked like it had been hit by a microscopic shotgun blast.

      2. Fudging the output, input or more likely both. It’s not a hard measurement to make, but you need the right tools to do so, and likely very few people with both the tools and inclination to actually do that measurement, would buy one of them.

         (Great. Now *I* want to buy one. Thanks.)

         It might also be the maximum possible output, on a good day, just as it turns on.

   2. Problem — in front of the ape with the laser is a clown holding an umbrella. Just the hand of the laser ape is exposed around the umbrella. This is how they arrange their marches — shields up front, active hostiles behind them.

      They do this ESPECIALLY so any action against the active hostiles has to go through “peaceful” shields first. Then the internet lights up with carefully trimmed videos showing the harmless guy just carrying an umbrella getting shot.

      I don’t think they *want* to die, but they’re banking on one of their number getting hurt in a picturesque way to score PR points. They want martyrs to unite useful idiots who won’t look any deeper than those carefully trimmed videos.

      Not saying no one should defend themselves, just saying there likely won’t be a clear target.

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      1. 124 gr 9mm NATO ball. Shoot through the human shield and get the asshole with the laser behind him.

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      2. The clown with the umbrella is an accomplice before the fact of assault threatening grave bodily injury. That makes him a target in any civilized jurisdiction.

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   3. I’m with you on this one, sir.

      This isn’t a game. These lasers aren’t toys. You stick these in people’s faces, they will suffer vision loss.

      The proper response is to treat it like assault — and shoot them. Not because we’re bloodthirsty loons, but because this has gotten way out of hand here. Maybe they’ve been told ‘it’s only temporary’. I don’t know. Nor do I care.

      But that coach gun is looking better and better all the time.

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7. This crap will stop right quick once people start shooting these so-called “activists”.

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8. IANAL, but here in Flyover State, if you are the wheelman for an armed robbery crew, and one of your buddies kills somebody YOU are facing murder one.

   I suspect that if you, for instance, hold somebody so your homie can beat him to death, ditto.

   Again IANAL, but I wonder if you enable slob “A” to seriously wound someone, are you not on the hook for Slob “A”-s crime/time, if you facilitate his felony?

   This my thought: (a) “I feared I would be blinded, and acted to end the threat”.

   (b): “they attempted to blind me, my vision was impaired, I feared that, once blinded, they would kill me, and so did the best that I could to selectively avert further threat”.

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9. Green laser to the face/eyes is a clear danger to “great bodily harm” that justifies pulling and shooting. And remember lasers work both ways for targeting the threat.

   Blue shirt guy, face to face, minute he pulls door closed, he would have caught a round also if that was me, preventing me from getting to safety from an angry, surrounding mob, I’d call it justified.

   But remember also, Portland, and thus Multnomah county, are part of the I-5 progressive left corridor… same courts that convicted Mike Strickland’s self defense case after an Antifa mob beat him and came back for more at a public protest in July of 2016.

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   1. ^^ This ^^

      Mike Strickland’s case was a terrible miscarriage of justice. I can’t say I wouldn’t have drawn down on the fat-ass rushing me from the side, too — not if he was doing it while I was being threatened by three other Antifa rioters.

      But thus is “justice” in Portlandia/Multnomah County. The mayor of Portland is now coming out saying the riots — that he fully supported for two months — have to stop. He’s saying they have to stop now, because the feds have pulled out, the violence continues unabated, and it’s clear to anyone with two brain cells that the feds weren’t the cause.

      (Oh, and it’s bad optics for the Democrats and will be used in pro-Republican campaign ads. [sarcasm] But that’s beside the point, I’m sure! [/sarcasm])

      Meanwhile, the city is burning, law enforcement is ham-strung and overwhelmed, homes and businesses are being destroyed, and tax-paying people are leaving. Portland is following in lock-step with New York City, hemorrhaging its most productive citizens, and they still can’t bring themselves to call a spade a spade.

      And if history (e.g.: Seattle, St. Louis) is any guide, they won’t unless/until their homes are personally threatened by the mob.

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