Re:One hell of an aim... (Score 1)

Easy.

I was playing with a little red laser pointer (prior to 9/11) and observed that while the beam was only 2mm wide leaving the pointer it was about 6-10 feet across on the roof of a house about 900 feet away.

And, using reflectance off of dust in the atmosphere, is was easy to point at about anything I wanted to illuminate. However, the beam hitting the roof wasn't bright enough to be able identify, say, a person at 900 ft, and certainly not bright enough to 'blind' them.