Ironically that seems promising. This could just be an engineering problem where the only people making the required laser equipment are only making lab/medical grade gear with enormous markups. It's possible someone comes up with a practical to manufacture solid state version that unlocks these displays for the masses.
There is one consideration however where one failure mode for this device includes a situation where the processing locks up and leaves the laser pointed at a single spot continuously, burning a hole and possibly starting a fire.
Lasers used for laser light shows already have interlocks that will stop the laser if the mirror stops moving.
My understanding is that femtosecond lasers have some parts that are physically large because they use prisms, diffraction gratings, and such, to spread out a pulse so the laser can effectively amplify it and then recompress the pulse to use it.
note a workable laser "gun" could plausibly be "set to stun" because if the energy of a pulse sparks the air near your skin or clothing, the plasma absorbs almost all the energy causing a plasma explosion which can knock you down plus cause severe pain from an electromagnetic pulse.
I think ops point still holds - actively modulated q switches could still have a failure that pushes the laser outside the safety parameters, no? I don’t think OP was necessarily suggesting a software failure.
Q-switching does not operate like a transistor's base. It is more like the charge pump on a camera flash. It will not produce a high-power pulse if operated outside of parameters. There are other ways with different physics but comparable principles.
There is one consideration however where one failure mode for this device includes a situation where the processing locks up and leaves the laser pointed at a single spot continuously, burning a hole and possibly starting a fire.