[citation needed] the post. I realize you're just going off of what you see in Sci-Fi, but one thing should be made clear: The Navy's fastest rail gun shoots projectiles at 2,520 m/s. That's 0.00084% of the speed a laser weapon's photons would travel at. The hand-held rail guns in Mass Effect shoot at significantly less than 1% of light speed, and the Dreadnaught guns are said to fire at 1 to 1.3% of light speed.