Honestly, what's wrong with guns? I know we have lots of them, but we should allow all users to have a go at something they like. If gun-making works for Soviet, let him keep on creating it. Soviet is a great gun-maker, so are other people, and he obviously put's a lot of effort into his creations, and in my mind, that's all that matters.
I once had a go, and it completely failed. I sort of over-complicated while trying to fix mistakes in the electronics so that when something went wrong it was harder to fix it and see what was going wrong. My final result was basically heaps of basic electronics spammed into many that fires a bullet that has a less than 25% chance of firing successfully.
Yeah... I'm just going to stick with PHOT lasers...