Laspistol

A completely accurate depiction of how useful this is.

The Laspistol is the pistol-sized variant of the Lasgun used by the Imperial Guard. It was primarily made as a sidearm for officers, as well as what few assault troops are present in the Guard. A laspistol can be made in many different ways, ranging from your standard factory-produced pistol for average squad sergeants to artisan-crafted pistols for for Rogue Traders or Imperial Governors that are just as much pieces of art as functional weapons.

Virtually all Imperial Guard officers (aside from Commissars, who generally prefer Bolt Pistols) and combat personnel, will be armed with this pistol (unless they can get access to shinier bits like plasma or bolt pistols) since it's fuckeasy to make, maintain, use, and die with. Especially the latter. The laspistol lacks the range of the lasgun but when in range it has the same effect as the lasgun. Basically, if because the lasgun is a flash light, the laspistol is a pocket light.

Of course, real Imperial Guard assault troops, like Krieg combat engineers, prefer shotguns to laspistols, because they hold no illusions about their close combat capabilities, and because a boomstick is a fucking manly weapon, approved by Colonel "I kick Chaos Terminators in the balls for fun" Straken.

Of course, like the lasgun, a laspistol is generally described as being quite capable of shooting through a modern-day concrete wall, penetrating a civilian car's body in one shot, and dealing a similar amount of damage to a modern day high-caliber revolver/pistol or an SMG burst. At least it has the same stats as the Autopistol and Stub-pistol which are essentially the same as todays micro-Uzi (or equivalent) and Desert Eagle (or other heavy pistol) IN SPACE.

While shots from the laspistol are less likely to kill than shots from a bolt pistol, Commissar Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, argues that the saving grace of the laspistol is one of reliable ammunition, since a laspistol power pack can be recharged by anything (batteries, solar panels, or even just chucking it in a firepit) while the bolt pistol needs physical ammunition to feed it, and a Commissar can only carry so much (even with Jurgen and endless pouches could only carry a few magazines). Amberley Vail also notes that part of the appeal of bolt pistols is because they're big, loud, and make a statement. Ironically, this is also the reason why so many commissars are attracted to bolt pistols over laspistols, although Vail warns that telling a commissar that to their face would probably get you a demonstration on how dangerous a bolt pistol is.

So remember, the pistol is actually quite powerful by our standards, it's just that it's in a setting where the standards are guns loaded with miniature rockets for ammunition, lightweight guns that fire super-heated bolts of energy capable of penetrating heavy armor as if it were wet tissue paper, guns capable of disintegrating anything that they're fired at, literally recoilless guns that are capable of sending out a flurry of jagged disks capable of severing limbs, or somewhere along those lines.

Of course, all of this depends on who's writing the fluff - different authors portray weapons differently.

See Also

• Commissar - The famous users of the laspistol Bolt pistol, which they use to motivate their troops.
• Lasgun - Laspistol's mommy.
• Multilaser- Laspistol's big bro.