Firing at the same location on a ship is not good for me, I am a very bad shot given all the "aiming water" I drink.
I actually first went a different path, and looked at
starcitizendb.com in order to figure this out, and by comparing the 3-second DPS average I conclude:
Distortion guns indeed have a higher DPS when compared to laser weapons of the same size making them the better choice for killing the shield - which makes a lot of sense gameplay wise as they only do damage to the shield and not to the hull.
I also looked at
an old COMM link article about shield design, and there is mentioned that damage from laser and distortion weapons goes into the shield first, while for ballistic guns, around 60% of the damage goes to the shield and the remaining damage is dealt to the hull directly, depending on shield, shield subcomponents etc...
Ballistic guns and laser guns seem to do similar damage to the hull if there is no shield, but a laser has a high EM radiation making you a simpler target for EM-tracking missiles etc while ballistics have limited ammo. Interestingly, heat output is similar between ballistic, laser and distortion guns.
The values in the startcitizendb have not been updated since 3.2.1 though, and I feel that the shield article doesn't contain all the information...