But it's not just starlight - it's the light of a whole nova (and the collective light of a whole galaxy.)
I can see starlight from the bottom of a pool, but the water in the pool will still stop a bullet.
(I am not a scientist, I could be entirely wrong, but it seems like the collective dust of 12 million light years would surely ground down a bullet, while being intermittent enough to let starlight pass through in aggregate.)
The collective dust of 12 million light years of intergalactic space does not seem likely to grind down a bullet very much.
That said, the whole calculation is flawed because first you have to get out of our galaxy, which is much higher density. Though that also wouldn't stop a bullet. But then you have our atmosphere, and that most definitely would destroy a bullet that tried to pass through it!
But the moral remains. Space is empty. Really empty. Unimaginably so.
I can see starlight from the bottom of a pool, but the water in the pool will still stop a bullet.
(I am not a scientist, I could be entirely wrong, but it seems like the collective dust of 12 million light years would surely ground down a bullet, while being intermittent enough to let starlight pass through in aggregate.)