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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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If it was a blank, how can you hit someone with it?
Blanks still fire a jet of super hot air and fire with some force. Even without a projectile, it can still injure or even kill someone if they're close enough.
This is why. He shot gunpowder and hardened glue projectiles at a child. If you put a blank in a gun, put the gun to your temple and pull the trigger, you can still die. In fact, it has happened before.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/71752/how-do-blanks-work-compared-regular-bullets
Just because the cartridge doesn't have a bullet doesn't mean nothing comes out of the business end.
With a properly functioning blank, there shouldn't be any projectile coming out of the muzzle. This guy made his own with gunpowder and glue, so apparently there was some kind of glue blob that was a projectile.
The force of the expanding gas is sufficient to hurt people, even with a properly made blank. It's why a gun designed to fire only blanks doesn't even have a barrel with an opening that could compress the gas.
It's why you generally avoid firing a gun of any sort in a crowd. Even when they're as safe as possible, they're not safe.
Says it was a homemade blank made from gunpowder and glue. Depends on the construction but the glue "bullet" (probably just a plug to keep the gunpowder in) should explode in the barrel and shoot out basically dust.
However you can't guarantee the glue plug would fully disintegrate and at close range the debris can be moving fast enough to cause damage and can be hot enough to burn.
Ask Brandon Lee.
Technically Brandon Lee was killed by a bullet. They removed the powder but left the bullet (for appearance sake since it was a revolver and would be noticeable). Since there was no powder the bullet didn't fire out of the gun when the trigger was pulled but the primer (which wasn't removed) igniting created enough force to put the bullet in the barrel where it got jammed.
No one noticed the jammed bullet, and when they next fired it with blanks this time (powder charge, no bullets) the powder was now forceful enough to fire the bullet out of the gun.
Essentially they accidentally made a revolver into a breach loaded firearm.
What gets me about that is, yeah, they didn't check the barrel, but when they pulled the dummy rounds out to put in the blanks why didn't anyone notice that one of the casings was missing its bullet? Shouldn't that be an easy thing to spot?
When you unload a revolver you're looking at it from behind, and if you just dump the casings into your hand you might not notice. Maybe that happened.
Or maybe they only replaced one bullet with a blank.
Or maybe they were just lazy and negligent.
Would you like to know more?
Because it's a bullet without the bullet - it's still a directed explosion that could kill someone with air pressure alone if you're close enough
Now let's say there's something in the barrel, or in this case a chunk of glue from a home made blank propelled out at the speed of a bullet. It's a lot less force or energy than a piece of lead, but everything is pretty deadly when it's going faster than the speed of sound
The blast itself can kill, Brandon Lee's death was due to a blank.
His death was a squib load, which is where a bullet is lodged in the barrel, not in the casing. The blast from the blank projected the bullet out of the barrel.
But yes, just the blast can kill too.
You are correct but the Jon-Erik Hexum did actually play russian roulette with a revolver loaded with a blank and suffered from braindeath, so it is still very worth noting that blanks can still very much kill.