Think about it.
In real life right now, we have guns that can shoot several times a second and hit whatever you aim at pretty much instantly. Sci/fi guns seem to fall into two categories- Star Trek-like phasers or Star Wars-like blasters.
If you watch Star Trek, it's blatantly obvious how frigging useless phasers are; they shoot a beam that gives away your position, can apparently only shoot once every few seconds and aren't effective on half the things you shoot at - take the Borg for example - immune to phasers after a few shots, but watch the movie First Contact, and you'll see Picard mow several down with a tommy gun. What possible reason apart from the stun setting could the Federation have for using them?
In Star Wars it's even worse - blasters not only give away your position and don't shoot nearly as quickly as a regular gun, but move so slowly through the air that anyone but a tortoise with emphysema has time to jump the hell out of the way. Not only that, but people exist in the Star Wars universe that are quite capable of bouncing the shots right back at you. I'd like to see one of those pussy Jedi bounce a lead slug moving at twice the speed of sound back at its target.