Gee, I finally get some use out of that SFCONSIM membership. 
Laser range is actually dependent on the diameter of the final focusing optics -- basically, the bigger the lens out front, the further it can shoot. The optics laws involved are rather beyond me, but as I understand it, lasers aren't straight -- they have dispersal. In order to burn a target, you have to be able to put the focus point of your laser emitter right on the target (which means variable-focus lenses), and there's a hard limit to how far out a lens of a given diameter can focus a beam. That's also why you can't read license plates from spy sattelites -- we know the absolute upper limit on the diameter of primary optics that either the USA or (f)USSR has ever orbited (limited by the cargo fairing diameter of ELVs and the cargo bay of the STS), and they simply aren't big enough (barring some very unlikely breakthroughs in synthetic-aperture optics, at any rate).
Lasers for antipersonnel use are also a problem in that people make bad targets for lasers ("bags of dirty water," natch). The beam cross-sectional intensity required is enough that the beam creates self-defeating turbulence in the air it travels through, so the only workable approach is to pack very large amounts of wattage into a very brief pulse. And to get the same punch as a bullet, you need to deliver enough energy to a small enough spot to cause localised explosions of the targetted flesh -- otherwise you're just causing (very nasty, granted) surface burns. Bullets are actually more efficient, in terms of expended energy, especially since they carry their energy into the target.
Laser range is actually dependent on the diameter of the final focusing optics -- basically, the bigger the lens out front, the further it can shoot. The optics laws involved are rather beyond me, but as I understand it, lasers aren't straight -- they have dispersal. In order to burn a target, you have to be able to put the focus point of your laser emitter right on the target (which means variable-focus lenses), and there's a hard limit to how far out a lens of a given diameter can focus a beam. That's also why you can't read license plates from spy sattelites -- we know the absolute upper limit on the diameter of primary optics that either the USA or (f)USSR has ever orbited (limited by the cargo fairing diameter of ELVs and the cargo bay of the STS), and they simply aren't big enough (barring some very unlikely breakthroughs in synthetic-aperture optics, at any rate).
Lasers for antipersonnel use are also a problem in that people make bad targets for lasers ("bags of dirty water," natch). The beam cross-sectional intensity required is enough that the beam creates self-defeating turbulence in the air it travels through, so the only workable approach is to pack very large amounts of wattage into a very brief pulse. And to get the same punch as a bullet, you need to deliver enough energy to a small enough spot to cause localised explosions of the targetted flesh -- otherwise you're just causing (very nasty, granted) surface burns. Bullets are actually more efficient, in terms of expended energy, especially since they carry their energy into the target.