Ah, in-universe.

hand-held weapons that can vaporize a human being

About that, the US military did experiments with powerful lasers in 2000. The result:

• first few milliseconds create a superficial wound
  • spark of hurt paralyzes the target
• vaporized mass creates a charged plasma, that shields against further shots
• longer pulsing frequencies literally eat through the target (ablative)
  • explosive pulses (more powaar) are less effective

This one i think?

Woah, a epstein hijack on Archive? And no pdf upload…