One myth left: can I just use a mirror to reflect the high power laser at the gun that fired it to destroy it?
When this happens with a pulsed laser you can sometimes hear it. That tiny snap-snap-snap is the sound of your three-hundred-dollar optic heading for the trash. You'll look at it and see the telltale little spots. If you're cheap you'll try just sliding it sideways to a non-spotted bit of surface, but sometimes there isn't enough mirror for that...
That's with a high-tech custom-designed laser mirror, not a random surface of some random object. And we're generally not trying to destroy it. And yet they often get destroyed, when you screw around with high-intensity lasers.