How could Alec Baldwin kill someone with a blank bullet?
A gun is a gun, even in the movies.
Stupor on the night of October 22, in French hours: the world discovered, horrified, that Alec Baldwin had killed Halyna Hutchins, director of photography for the film he is shooting in New Mexico, Rust, as well as seriously injured Joel Souza, its director.
Baldwin was immediately overheard by the local police, and the American media are talking about a shooting accident caused by a dummy weapon (prop gun in English) loaded blank, as has happened in the past. The most famous example remains that of the death of Brandon Lee, son of Bruce, during the filming of The Crow in 1993.
But how the hell is it possible to kill someone with a dummy weapon and blank bullets, on the apparently very secure set of a Hollywood movie? This is what journalist Ross A. Lincoln tries to explain in The Wrap.
First of all, he reminds us that all dummy weapons are not necessarily so. The desire for "verisimilitude" of many directors pushes them to make the actors use real weapons, the physical representation of which (weight, size, material) is therefore faithful to reality, unlike that of a toy gun. or an accessory created for the occasion.
It is therefore probable, if not certain, that the weapon with which Alec Baldwin apparently fired was a very real revolver: as Ross A. Lincoln reminds us, a weapon remains a weapon, albeit closely supervised by a professional, and can therefore do the damage that we imagine.
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Said gun was, on the other hand and a priori, loaded blank. Then again, The Wrap goes into great detail to explain what a blank ball really is. Normal revolver ammunition, or a cartridge in the case of a rifle, is a small shell consisting of a primer, a case containing the powder (the propellant charge) and, at its head, the projectile (s) to strictly speaking.
When the shot is triggered, the primer detonates the powder, which itself propels the projectile at very high speed towards its target. In the case of a blank bullet, the principle is exactly the same but the projectile is withdrawn then replaced by a material, such as paper or wax for example, responsible for containing the powder and allowing the explosion.
During a shot, the latter takes place, a high temperature gas is created, the weapon produces a realistic sound and lightning flash, the case is ejected from the weapon, but no lethal object is assumed in to be propelled. At least when everything is going normally, which it did not seem to be the case here.
The Wrap explains that the mere explosion of a blank bullet is violent enough to cause significant damage, although no actual projectile is expelled from the barrel. “Everything close to the weapon is in danger,” writes Ross A. Lincoln: even blank and in the same way that a revolver remains a revolver, a blank bullet remains above all a bullet.
The Wrap further adds that if the shot is made at close range, the material (albeit soft) replacing the projectile can cause serious damage - "joking" with a blank Russian roulette, actor Jon-Erik Hexum is one of them. died in 1984 during the filming of Model Spy (Cover Up).
An investigation is underway into the tragedy involving Alec Baldwin. Only she will be able to determine what really went wrong with this accessory which was not one. Incompetence of the team responsible for managing the film's weapons, the actor's recklessness with his real-dummy gun, technical accident with the ammunition, sabotage ... Anything is possible with a Hollywood weapon, even real deaths.
