I do recall some post a while back when I was looking at them, he said they just weren't good quality. Wouldn't hold a zero well. The illuminator has an uneven spread and is sort cockeyed (I think he said they fixed that). To my knowledge, you can buy these because they aren't US technology. I can tell you the casing is cheap as shit as I had a Russian scope cast the same way.
They had one that was very powerful, but they had to pull it. US didn't like that one I guess.
For most use, the civilian lasers at .7mW works fine (that's the low setting on a PEQ2 btw). They're also good quality. You can easily hit targets to 300m with an M4 using one, and past that it's not that great for aiming anyway. I rarely used the hi setting. It's really best when you've got a squad aiming at one target since you can't tell which dot is yours, or designating the target for others. On hi it throws a beam from the weapon to the target, not just a dot. Hi can also burn out your NODs if you aren't careful, even through reflected light (particularly with the really hi power models like the IZLID). A lot of times hi is just too much also. Too much bloom and the dot looks like a bright star and less like a dot. Giant halos on the target. Useless then.
You can find PEQ2's and such on Ebay, just make sure you know what a real one looks like. And I'd get the SN off it and run that through the manufacturer, CID, FBI and local police to see if they're looking for it and who bought it. They only recently started keeping track of the original buyer for chain of custody reasons. Combat loss is same as stolen now if it shows back up. If not, go for it. There ARE still some out there that were given to individual soldiers free for the asking (though they told me they stopped that a few years back). They're likely to be the PEQ2 models vs. the later PEQ15/16's, but you won't know without running the numbers. PAQ4 is shit, get a civilian laser first.
Whatever you get, treat it like a loaded weapon and remove batteries after each use.
