That's horribly excessive, even with him being on probation. I imagine most people are not aware of how dangerous it is.

When you are on parole and get convicted of another crime that is less severe than the original crime you are on parole for the judge decides how much of your paroled sentence you must go back to serve and can add on some time up to the max for the crime you committed. Since this guy was unrepentant the judge just said fuck him and probably sent him back to serve out the entire remainder of his paroled sentence

Probably because there has been no evidence it is very dangerous and there would be evidence if it actually were.

Besides all of the pilots...you know...saying it is dangerous.

Then learn. A laser can blind you, and can distract you while you are operating a motor vehicle.

Should we ban laser pointer? No, because that's stupid.

Should we make sure people understand tools and how to use them? YES.

>A laser can blind you

Yes, it can blind you, the user, but it can not blind a pilot. Any consumer laser will have too high a divergence to create dangerous power densities at any significant range.

>and can distract you while you are operating a motor vehicle

Sure it can. But so can cell phones, shaving, eating, jaywalking... People aren't getting 14 years for those.

The difference is that by cell phone, and eating, you are distracting yourself.

Would you shove a phone in front of someone who is driving, to make them read a text? (I am obviously exaggerating, but you get the idea).

It's 14 years for blinding someone else.

You obviously don't know what kind of lasers are available for purchase online. They're not your average presentation laser pointers. I know one pilot that completely lost his night vision in approach after a green laser hit the windshield. By luck his copilot was looking down at the time.

14 years is fucking absurd.

> Despite his lawyer's best efforts.

If that was a jury, then its very easy to imagine how frightened they were thinking if "out of fun" the laser would hit a plane they've boarded and lead to a crash and death of hundreds of people.

I suspect the facts of hitting an emergency transplant helo from the local children's hospital with a child patient on-board and then repeatedly hitting a police helo sent to investigate would be equally or perhaps more compelling to a jury.

Don't screw with kids on transplant lists while shooting a laser at helicopters. Oh, you can't know that there was a child on board? Well, how about we just don't shoot at any air traffic?

I've been lased in my light airplane. It's only been annoying to date, but in just the perfect circumstances, it could be quite dangerous.