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Prop Guns and Blanks
Words have meaning. Any firearm capable of pushing a projectile out of barrel is not a prop, even though it might be used as a prop. Blanks are capable of causing physical injury, serious physical injury, and death.
The investigation into the accidental shooting involving Alec Baldwin, the death of Director of Photography Halnya Hutchins, and the wounding of Director Joel Souza is ongoing. I’m not going to comment on what the result of that investigation will be. Two statements that have been made have caught my attention.
There were at least two accidental gun discharges on the set of an Alec Baldwin movie being filmed in New Mexico days before he fatally shot the cinematographer, according to three former members of the film’s crew. – from the New York Times
Guns do not discharge themselves. Someone has to pull the trigger. Guns used as a prop should not have a modified trigger, or a hair-trigger. If the discharges were due to mishandling the weapon that calls for better training of the actor. If the actor is uncooperative he/she should not be allowed to handle a firearm.
If the armorer determines there is a mechanical problem with the firearm then it’s time to find a gunsmith.
According to the affidavit by the detective in the Santa Fe County sheriff’s office, the gun used in the shooting was set up by Hannah Gutierrez, the production’s armorer, and handed to Mr. Baldwin by Dave Halls, the assistant director. Neither Ms. Gutierrez nor Mr. Halls responded to requests for comment. – from the New York Times
According to the current story Mr. Baldwin was told the gun was cold. A firearm that can fire blanks is never cold. It’s either empty, or loaded.
There should be a chain of custody protocol on a movie, or television set. The armorer should hand the firearm to the actor. As a secondary check the armorer should check the weapon in the presence of the actor. The actor should not receive the firearm from anyone else on the crew.
All firearms that can fire a projectile should be considered hot. I treat my own firearms, and a firearm that belongs to anyone else as hot before I clean them, handle them, or if a friend would like to handle one. I follow that protocol at a gun store.
Published in GunsActors in particular are at serious risk of injury from blank cartridges used on movie sets. Several actors have been killed in such mishaps:
Brandon Lee was killed while filming a scene for the 1994 film The Crow when a .44-caliber S&W Model 629 revolver used as a prop that contained a squib load — a bullet accidentally stuck in the gun barrel — was fired with a blank cartridge, which propelled the lodged bullet down the barrel. As reported in the investigation and court records, the dummy round used during an earlier shoot was handloaded by someone other than a firearms expert, who removed the propellant powder but unknowingly left a live primer in place, resulting in a bullet being separated from the casing without enough energy behind it to exit the barrel. The gun was not properly checked for the retained bullet prior to the incident, and the squib load was then blown out of the barrel by the blast energy of the blank, fatally injuring Lee.
Jon-Erik Hexum was killed on the set of the TV series Cover Up, when he placed a blank-loaded .44 Magnum revolver to his right temple and pulled the trigger as a joke — the powerful shockwave from the blank cartridge caused a depression fracture to the skull, sending bone fragments deep into his brain and causing severe intracranial hemorrhage. He died a few days after the accident.
Johann Ofner, a professional stunt double, was killed in 2017 while filming a scene for Bliss n Eso music video “Dopamine” in the Brooklyn Standard bar in Brisbane.
A 17-year old was playing with a gun used in a St. George, Utah high school theatre program to be used in a production of Oklahoma!, and accidentally killed himself, thinking that “blank” cartridges were harmless. – from Wikipedia
As far as I know, we have no clue what actually happened. But we can rule out several things:
And only one person pulled the trigger. There is a whole lot that goes into creating the circumstance in which this is fatal, but there it is. Guns do not care about Hollywood “rules” or “exceptions”. That’s manure.
Oh, yeah? These are actors. They talk for a living. To them maybe “misspeak” doesn’t mean “failed to speak”. Or on the other hand, maybe misfire means fire the way inflammable means flammable. These are actors. :)
When I say crimped I mean scrunched together toward the tip, with the sides corrugated longitudinally to fold together increasingly toward the tip side by side. It looks somethin like a closed rosebud. Boy, this is harder to describe than I thought.
When the powder expands it pushes the crimps out to swing away from the centerline and toward the chamber wall. There’s really very little forward force on the crimped end except at the very beginning of the pressurization which just opens up the crimp. It’s very hard for a fresh piece of brass to break away.
Right. I’m sympathetic to Manny’s suspicion, but I reject it because if a crimped blank fragmented, the pieces would do little more than leave scars to tell your grandkids about — if you could find them in the wrinkles. In general, you would need more powder to blow a blank apart than would fit into the blank.
.50BMG and up — no guarantees.
In my neck of the woods, we consider a primer failing to function a misfire; a primer functioning but failing to ignite the propellant, either partially or fully, is a hang fire.
Yes, that is correct and what I understood. That is what one would expect to happen normally, the crimped mouth to open against the gun chamber. And the brass should be elastic enough to just swing open. But if there was some scoring or the material was brittle, I could picture pieces breaking off and propelling forward. Still the lethality of that piece would not be very much, but maybe it was close range at her heart, who knows. It’s unlikely but could be one of those 1 in a million events.
Agree. It could only be lethal if it were up against a vital body part.
Yes. Misfire technically means No Bang.
Sure. One quibble. Frangibility is a result of work hardening, typically from reloading. I don’t think anyone makes crimped blanks from reloads. I would think it’s too labor intensive for just a couple dozen movie rounds. And also, as an aside I have used actual wax bullets that were completely modern bullet shaped, and not just wax sealing discs. Not that it matters, really.
Oh really, actual wax bullets? I’ve never seen that. What were they for? I have heard of “less than lethal” bullets made from rubber for some sort of crowd control. I’ve never actually seen them though.
Yes, it would be unusual to re-work the brass over and over for that application. But we are talking about a one in a million event, so usual things would have had to have happened. But I was thinking the material properties of the brass were not to standard. Some sort of manufacturing issue. These are all highly unlikely but who knows. Strange things happen. But I’m thinking it was a real bullet.
Presumably, this was a conventional cartridge.
Regarding blanks, Hollywood often uses very powerful blanks. Contrast what you’ve seen in Hollywood with what you see with a starter pistol. Hollywood loves lots of flame coming from the barrel. That means substantial extra propellant. That extra propellant was what caused the Brandon Lee situation to be so deadly.
I found wax bullets on Wikipedia. For crowd control. That must be a pretty strong wax because I can’t see how the hold shape.
Yes, who would have thought that a rigid O-ring would have brought down the Challenger. But this is much more mundane I think.
The wax bullets were for paper, living room target practice.
Yes, and the blanks have to cycle the action.
And thanks. I didn’t know that about Brandon Lee. I wondered how a blank pushed a lodged bullet, especially a revolver.
Yes, they were used for that too. This was a long time ago. I don’t even remember if rubber bullets were in common use back then.
Hollywood needs to be forced to have a trained NRA safety official on every movie set which uses firearms real or fake of any kind. And all Hollywood actors filming with guns must by law be made to go to an NRA site for certification and safety training courses and education on the 2nd amendment before filming can commence. They must re-up the certification every year to keep it current.
I agree, but I get nervous about the musts and shalls. For obvious reasons. No matter what, this is just going right up our breeches. Kind of like Obama jobpocalypse and Biden’s lockdowns. They cause it, then punish us by getting what they want at our expense as “solution”.
And according to Vanity Fair which quoted Baldwin, the shooting “occurred while a scene was being filmed”. If this is true, it changes a few of my assumptions. For example, he wasn’t kidding around or holding the gun idly while talking.
Why? I don’t have to get re-certified for my CCW permit, and I handle guns all the time.
Hollywood shoots dozens of movies every year, showing hundreds if not thousands gun firings. They go decades between gun shooting accidents. They have protocols that work. It appears in this case protocols were ignored.
He certainly has had no mercy in the past for people who shot someone.
I always thought blanks meant it just made the sound of a gunshot, that it was empty. This is news to the un-educated on movie props.
The sound you hear (and the muzzle flash you sometimes see) is the combustion of propellant. Something has to keep the propellant in the cartridge. In live rounds, it is a bullet. In blanks, it is a small amount of light material called “wadding,” or the end of the cartridge where the bullet would have been is crimped closed. The wad comes out of the barrel as a bullet would, but because it isn’t very dense, it doesn’t hit with anywhere near as much force, and the force it does come out with dissipates rapidly with distance.
At close enough range, even the expanding gas could be deadly.
An AP article this morning said that the armorer removed an empty case from the gun after the shooting. If it was a revolver that makes perfect sense; if it was semi auto it likely wasn’t a typical live round since the case should have been ejected. Tough to know more since information is coming out slowly and piecemeal.
The movie is a Western, so I would bet on revolver.
The movie was a western. Thus, it was not a semi auto
The investigation is still not complete. The DA’s office may be able to release some information, but it is a criminal investigation involving a homicide, not all homicides are murders.
They were filming a Western. A semiautomatic pistol made an appearance in Big Jake, but that is the only one that I can think of, offhand.