Circular saws and lasers are vastly different in terms of safety. You don't have to worry about the reflection of a table saw in a mirror chopping your finger o

Circular saws and lasers are vastly different in terms of safety. You don't have to worry about the reflection of a table saw in a mirror chopping your finger off, you just need to worry about the actual physical spinning blade, which makes a lot of noise and seems very dangerous - it makes you more cautious just by its nature. A high-power laser pointer (that is available today, not when you were a kid) is very dangerous, in that it operates silently, it's so compact it fits in your shirt pocket, and if it reflects off a surface and hits someone in the eye - which is easy to do - it can cause irreparable damage and the damage may not even be immediately realized. In the worst cases blindness is instant. There's no re-attaching a fingertip, there's no stopping the bleeding. Your eye is just forever damaged.