Very glad you were able to successfully defend yourself, once in person and once on court. That has to be a relief!
I agree, however in one sense the bad guy almost always puts us in a position of reacting… they instigate the crime before we instigate the defense. That is part of why it is so important to drill in the muscle memory.
I think you’ll find quite a bit of discussion on here about practice with laser ammo, search on “dry fire” or “dryfire” as well as “laser” and you’ll turn up some threads. Lots of folks on here do use it, including me, @TexasEskimo, @Kiest, @BrophE and I’m guessing @45IPAC, @james, and more than a few others dry fire with or without laser ammo. It is indeed a very, very important way of practicing.
Edited to add a couple links