Damage occurs with as little as 60 seconds of exposure. From your own post.
Now, tell me how a person on the ground is going to keep their laser pointer aimed steadily at the retina of a pilot in a moving aircraft for 60 seconds plus? It just. Can't. Happen.
Is it a distraction and safety hazzard? Absolutely. Should they be punished for that? Of course. But to classify a laser pointer as a weapon? Puh-LEEZE.
I can cause damage with my magnifying glass in less than sixty seconds, if the target will hold still long enough.
And the higher power laser pointers available on the market today can cause flammable things like paper to burn. Also, it is possible to cause DAMAGE (not blindness, in as little a 1 second of exposure. This damage will leave a residual spot in the field of vision in such a manner as to make it impossible to see anything in the area of damage. Granted, this damage often will heal, given enough time. But so will a knife wound.
BTW, the law is not on your side. The legal definition of a weapon is:
dangerous weapon
n. any gun, knife, sword, crossbow, slingshot or other weapon which can cause bodily harm to people (even though used for target shooting). If a person is harmed by such a weapon that is left unguarded, improperly used, or causes harm even to a person who plays with it without permission, the victim or his/her survivors can sue for negligence and possibly win a judgment
Well, first off, the laser beam does not stay tiny over the distance of a couple of miles. There is spreading of the beam by diffraction, and the degree of spread is related to the narrowest part of the beam (beam waist) and the wavelength.
w(z) = w0[1+(z/z0)2]1/2
Here w(z) is the radius of the beam at a distance z away from the laser, w0 is the minimum beam radius, and z0 is the "Rayleigh range" given by
z0 = [ð/ë] * w02
A shortcut is to assume 1/beam waist, the answer will be in milliradians.
I calculated the spread of a green (533 nm) laser with an aperture of 1mm (laser pointers are actually less than that) and got a spot size of about twelve feet at 2 miles (well, 10,000 feet actually). That's a hair over four arc-minutes, or four times bigger than what my M1A can point.
If the aircraft is passing you at right angles, you are correct, aiming would be tough because of the angular rate of change. But, the further away it is, the larger the laser spot and lower the angular speed.
If the aircraft is approaching you, though, the angular rate of change is small. Go to an airport and stand along the approach path and you'll see that the craft does not move much in the up-down line.
This makes sense because if you zap a plane from the side or rear, who'd know? But approaching you, the pilot is facing you.
Now point your (empty) finger at the approaching plane and you'll see that you can keep pointing pretty much on target.
If you consider that you'd see the light shining on the aircraft, you have a feedback mechanism for aiming that you don't get with an M1A.
The studies done with laser pointers were done with the lower powered 5mw laser. This laser was 80 mw if the article is to be believed.
At 10,0000 ft it would look like a green 300 watt lightbulb a few dozen feet away. Not dim. This is based on the calculations in the link below.
http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/lasersaf.htm
While I don't think permanent damage can be done, the recipient of such a beam will certainly be dazzled and have night vision impaired for a while, and this is not good for anyone driving or flying.