NRA training emphasizes treating anything that looks like a firearm as if it was loaded with live ammunition. It would also be the case that for the situation noted here, the actor would be the one to load the firearm–ensuring that he is loading it with what he intends to use. (At the very least, he would be directly supervising the prop master in the loading of the firearm.)
Not to mention that the live ammo and the blanks would be stored in two completely different areas/containers . . . and these containers not located “next to each other”.
Blanks in a real gun can be fatal if close range, as there is a packing. This sounds like a real bullet. As for where he was aiming, could be for the camera or as a rehearsal.
Jon-Erik Hexum - was best known for a time travel show called Voyagers (in the 80s) - self inflicted fatal injury from a blank
They were shooting a western, and the preliminary news articles say the gun was a prop. I suppose we may discover it wasn’t, but that certainly seems like a reasonable assumption.
Seriously, I don’t think a movie set needs to keep actual guns with actual ammo around to keep the rats at bay. Especially a movie set that’s using real-looking guns as props.
In the event that they have a gun for that purpose (which I’m skeptical of but willing to entertain the hypothetical) it should be a totally different gun using totally different ammo that won’t even fit into the prop gun.
Anyway, yeah, I started to respond that there’s all sorts of scary critters down under, but then I got confused about where this all went down and checked.
Seems it was a mishap with blanks and not a “live round”
Although there were early reports that the gun contained live ammunition, the movie’s production company later said it contained blank rounds. A spokesperson for Rust Movie Productions said: “There was an accident today on the New Mexico set of Rust involving the misfire of a prop gun with blanks… Production has been halted for the time being.”
Are blanks made or bought? I believe there is some powder, and a packing. So wouldn’t you take a real bullet, empty out most of the powder and pack with paper?
So if made, there might be a reason to have real ammo on site
Generally bought. “Making” them requires some special equipment (same things as creating a bullet to begin with) that makes it difficult to do it on location.
I’ve never tried, but I believe you can buy blanks.
Even if you can’t, the live ammo should be nowhere near the gun. The making of the blanks should be nowhere near the set.
But now they are saying that there was no live ammo.
I know a blank can kill a person, but I don’t think it can go through a person and hit someone else. I guess Baldwin must have fired twice. Which is plausible since he was portraying some bad ass western grandpa breaking his grandson out of jail. You might shoot two guards in rapid succession if you were trying to do that.