DaButt
Friday 22nd October 2021 4:04pm [Edited]
14,722 posts
They'll use fake guns if they're filming a scene with rare guns or hundreds of them (like a WWII non-combat scene with droves of Nazis) but if it's a major scene where a gun needs to realistically fire, they'll use a real gun that's typically been modified so that it won't chamber a real round. Then they'll use blanks. In the case of Brandon Lee's death, someone had previously tried to chamber a real (or prop) round, and the bullet remained lodged in the barrel, and the blank fired it as if it were a real round.
Someone in charge of Baldwin's props made a huge mistake by not verifying that the barrel was clear and that the round was a blank. I'm sure it's on a checklist somewhere.
EDIT: Just read that the gun was loaded with live rounds. That's a multimillion-dollar mistake.