LambofGod - I apologise in advance because I'm about to rain on your parade. As much as I highly value and encourage curiosity and fun in all things scientific, I'm sorry to say that unless you have had training in the safe use of lasers from an appropriately qualified person I'd be taking your lasers from you. Even at class 3B, the professionals do a lot to limit exposure to the beams, not just for others but for ourselves too, and with very good reason. If the experts do this why should anyone else be exempt? Please, leave the bigger lasers alone unless you are in an appropriate environment, at your age that will either be a school or university teaching lab.
AMEandPPL - I had said in my earlier post that in the UK you can report sellers to the Department of Trade and Industry. Of course the DTI as such no longer exists but the appropriate body is now called the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) (
UK Dept for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform)
AnthonyGA
Reducing advertising or making the sale of higher-power lasers illegal won't help, because there's a very common source of high-power lasers: CD and DVD players.
I'll disagree and say that it certainly will help. I think you greatly overestimate most people's technical skills or inclination to take apart their CD or blu-ray or DVD player and get a working laser out of it. The vast majority will take the obvious (i.e. currently advertised) route and simply buy.
Of course, simply banning the sale of lasers won't help much for the lasers already out there. Banning unauthorised use of lasers, but allowing the sale of them, won't help either. A combination of both approaches would seem like a good place to start. To use a different problem as an example - if we simply ban people from using guns does that mean we can still allow the open, unregulated sale of them?