With only a quick stop at your local box store, you can be ready to pop a conventional cap in someone’s ass; however, charring said ass to a crisp using a laser or other ray weapon is not so easy. This is because—despite many decades of government promises—laser weapons do not currently exist (despite the ubiquity of industrial cutting lasers and promises by high school tech ed teachers that one false move with a pointer will render your lab partner a cyclops).
One of the earliest claims of ray-gun success was by Nicola Tesla (who else…), who in 1937 published a treatise titled The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-Dispersive Energy Through the Natural Media. The schematics of his “teleforce weapon” are suspiciously missing (having perhaps suffered fate similar to the Ark of the Covenant, which is stored in a vast government warehouse to the benefit of unwitting humankind). Later, Ronald Reagan spent many billions of dollars trying to scare Soviet scientists into believing the United States was, in fact, technologically able to create laser weapons capable of zapping ICBM’s out of the sky. This sparked projects with badass-sounding acronyms like MARAUDER and MEDUSA and MIRACL, but almost no measurable results (other than a precedent for massive defense spending on pipe dreams).
The crux, in the cases of almost all types of ray weapons, is in generating the needed energy using a method that is more portable than the standard nuclear power plant. Also difficult is the plasma breakdown of air when hit with massive energy, known as “blooming”—as the air breaks down, so too does the laser it conducts. Any particulate matter in the air greatly enhances blooming—bullets push dust and smoke aside; laser weapons have to burn through them.
What this means is that you should content yourself for now with your trusty Star Trek phaser, which, while the nadions it fires can be seen to travel much slower than the speed of light, can be set for stun in addition to kill.
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