My websites were always targeted primarily for the hardcore fans who almost know it all. The purpose of my sites was too shine light on some very obscure interviews and facts that aren't accessible in well known books or extras that are still available for purchase. However, times change, and new generations and fans come along - and I realized that a lot of my audience consist of fans who aren't diehards who know every book and interview by memory for decades (like all the fans at the Terminator Files Forum years ago), or just never went outside the films. So this is part of a different type of FAQ section, for those less initiated in Cameronverse.
Let's continue with "Why Does The Terminator Need a Red Laser Sighting?"
The Terminator request a gun with laser, but the laser sighting on the gun is red and the Terminator sees in red, so isn't it pointless?
The idea of a handgun with a lasersight came very late, and isn't even included in any of the versions of the script, not even the final 5th draft. In all iterations of the script, the Terminator requests "normal" .45 handgun among other guns. The first poster for the film, a painting by James Cameron, also presents the Terminator with a .45 gun that's not unusual in any way
Sometime right before the production, or during it, the idea of a lasersight came in. It is mentioned in the US novelization for the first time (although published in 1985, it was being written before the film was finished).
However, in the novelization the Terminator actually does not operate in infrared only (he switched to infrared-only much later in the story to conserve energy consumption) so despite targeting system, a lasersight would have been a small added bonus.
In the film, the Terminator requests gun after gun off the rack. He then glances at a brand new gun that's featured right in front of him on a display and ASKS about what it is ("That 45 Long Slide, with Laser Sighting?"), and it incidentally already came with a laser attached. The clerk answers with details about it, confirming it's a brand new thing that he just got, a pitch that convinces the Terminator to add the gun to his arsenal as well. The Terminator doesn't need the lasersight, he wants the gun that just happened to come with a lasersight.
Now, the reason why the gun is featured in the film is for storytelling purposes. And by then it didn't even exist yet! It was made for the movie (faked, since the laser is actually connected to power source via cable hidden in the sleeve), but there were no guns with lasersight yet. The red dot shows the audience visually that the Terminator has his sight on a victim. It then shows us a pattern - red dot on the Wrong Sarah - bam, she's dead. Red dot on Ginger, bam. She's dead. And it's all to bring more tension to the Tech Noir scene, so that when Sarah gets a red dot on her forehead, the audience knows what it means, and almost thinks she'll be dead.
In December 1984 issue of Soldier of Fortune Magazine, a magazine for gun aficionados, Cameron, who was interviewed while still working on the film, is asked about the lasersight (and told by them that it's one of only two things that bothered them because lasersight on guns doesn't exist!). Cameron confirms its purpose in storytelling
The red lasersight is yet again used as a storytelling device in T2 as well, this time with Sarah, who uses it to try to kill Miles Dyson. The use of red dot and Sarah's stoic, lit in cold colors, unmoved face mirrors the image of the Terminator from the first movie, while Dyson mirrors her own character from the past - an innocent targeted for termination for something he hasn't done yet. A brilliant twist and character shift.
James Cameron: "The first Terminator film was one of the first films that actually used the sighting laser, and it was certainly the first film that used one on pistol. Now, the sighting laser has never been mounted on an automatic pistol, we did it for that film. (...) Here it's being used just to connect the two films together. Now SHE's the one pointing the laser and getting ready to kill somebody. So everything's inverted, it's all stood on its head" (2003 Audio Commentary)
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