Blaster

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An Imperial blaster carbine
Shots from a blaster pistol can blow holes in concrete.

Blasters are common small arms used in Star Wars. The firepower of hand-held blasters varies, and at least some blasters have adjustable power settings. High-powered blasters can blow large chunks out of concrete (or to be precise -- its material equivalent in the worlds of Star Wars) walls, while low-powered blasters may only cause survivable wounds. Some blasters have a "stun" setting.

Blasters range in size from heavy support weapons that are mounted on vehicles, such as on the Rebel T-47 Snowspeeder/Airspeeder, and tripods, such as the E-Web heavy Blaster, to small hand-held units no bigger then the hand of a human. From handguns to rifles they vary in applications and usually the larger the weapon the more options they have available. There is a dedicated version of the E-Web that is distributed to local police forces that only has a stun setting available but can easily subdue large crowds known as a Riot Gun.

Blaster Cannons

Luke Skywalker referred to his modified airspeeder as using blasters, indicating that larger versions of blasters exist. Also, the Z-95 Headhunter, a snub fighter precursor to the X-wing, uses triple-blasters as its primary offensive weapon.

Differences from Turbolasers

Blasters are commonly thought of as small-scale turbolasers. However, blasters do not appear to be lightspeed weapons, although some evidence exists for their having an invisible damaging component that is just ahead of a visible bolt of waste energy.