Baldwin accident
A dead person, a seriously injured person from a blank cartridge – how is that possible?
Real weapons are mostly used in films. Here is a Colt Single Action Army, also known as a Peacemaker
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Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died and director Joel Souza was seriously injured when Alec Baldwin fired a revolver. One possible explanation for the accident.
It was a terrible accident on a location. Alec Baldwin injured two people with a historic revolver, one of whom was fatal. Nothing happened to him himself. The first impulse is to ask yourself: How can you accidentally shoot two people? Did Baldwin shoot wildly?
The answer: Baldwin didn’t shoot anyone with a bullet. According to the information so far, the weapon was not accidentally loaded with live cartridges. The camerawoman was apparently fatal and the director and screenwriter was seriously injured. Halyna Hutchins and Joel Souza “were shot and wounded when Alec Baldwin fired a gun that was used in the filming of the film ‘Rust’,” said police in the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico on Friday night.
No live ammunition
The revolver is said to have been properly loaded with blank cartridges. Then how can such a disaster come about? There are no official results yet, the most likely cause for the event described is that something was jammed in the barrel of the weapon, such as a lead projectile from a previous shot, and the gas pressure of the exploding blank cartridge was then unable to escape through the barrel.
There was a similar incident in 1993: Back then, actor Brandon Lee, son of martial arts star Bruce Lee, died on the set of the film “The Crow” from a shot in the stomach. The autopsy revealed that Lee had been hit by a bullet of live ammunition lodged in the barrel of the gun. This bullet had come loose when the blank cartridge detonated. However, if the bullet continues to get stuck in the purchase and does not come loose, the weapon can burst. There are numerous photos from the Second World War of heavy armored pipes that were torn open by a pinch in the barrel.
Klemmer in the run
If the gas cannot escape forwards, the load in a revolver acts on the connection of the drum in which the cartridges are stored and the barrel. Typical of such explosions is that the fragments are moved to the side and forwards by the explosion, but not backwards. So it is not uncommon for the shooter to be slightly injured or only injured in the hand when he shoots with an outstretched arm.
If the two victims had positioned themselves next to and just in front of Baldwin when he tried the weapon, they would have been in the area of impact of the explosion. Since there are multiple fragments, multiple sacrifices are also possible.
Problem of replicas
Bad intentions can practically be ruled out in such an event, but negligence cannot. If a foreign object had blocked the barrel, it should have been noticed when looking through the weapon while it was being loaded. The Hollywood practice of loading real guns with blank cartridges would then also be to blame. With pure show weapons, it would be impossible for sharp bullets to get stuck in the barrel. However, for safety reasons, commercially available replica guns in the USA must not look too real; they cannot be used for a close-up.