Are blank rounds harmless? What do they do?
In: Technology
A bullet has two main parts: The “round”, which is the part actually launched at the target, and the “case”, which holds the gunpowder and which stays behind in the gun during firing. (A lot of guns will then eject the case so that another round can be chambered, but I digress.)
To make a “blank”, the round is eliminated from the equation. Instead, a slightly elongated casing is used and the end is crimped shut to help seal the gunpowder from just pouring out. Some wax or wax-paper is usually also used
With a blank, there’s still a lot of very hot and high pressure gas and burning gunpowder coming out the barrel of the gun, not to mention debris from the blank case. So it is still far from harmless, especially at very close range.
There are two notable instances of actors dying from having blanks fired at them:
* The movie actor Brandon Lee died in the filming of the 1990s movie *The Crow* when, unbeknownst to the crew, one of the guns used in a scene had had a round jammed in its barrel; the blank dislodged the jammed round with enough force to kill Le.
* Jon-Erik Hexum was a TV actor who was filming a scene that involved him loading bullets into a gun. In between takes he got restless and started goofing around, and apparently nobody had told him just how dangerous blanks still are, because he pressed the gun against his temple and pulled the trigger. The force of the gasses coming out of the barrel was enough to punch a quarter-sized hole in his head. Suffice it to say, he didn’t survive either.
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