Alec Baldwin Shooting

[Spongebob]

Wow!  The key statement that I took away from this video occurs at 8:37:

"When you look at a dummy round, and you look at their appearance, they have the same projectile tip, some of these do not have holes in the side of them.  They mimic and look like a real round."

An actor is supposed to know the difference?

The current suspicion is that someone deliberately put live rounds in the box of dummy rounds.  That's quite devious; orchestrating a shooting without being the one to pull the trigger.

What?   Bollocks

We used blanks in our rifles when out bush on exercise. Our Weapons were the 7.62 SLR.   A blank round had a black plastic cartridge, crimped at the end where the bullet would normally be attached.


Just in case the passage of time had left me confused, I just googled "blank .38 round" , then 'live .38 round'.  The blanks are in fact shiny brass, with the end which usually takes the bullet being crimped. On a live round, the cartridge is brass  and the bullet is a copper colour  with a rounded tip. 

The person who made that statement on the video is an ignoramus,  a moron, or a defence lawyer.

I'm sure there are many different varieties of blanks, dummies and such just as there are many varieties of live rounds.  I'm not extremely familiar with ammunition, but I've done some hunting and shooting and I've used different ammunition for the same guns and they were not uniform in appearance.  Also, I've read that some film productions use dummy and blank rounds that are not mass produced but made by the armorer or some other small outfit.  I have some acquaintances who make their own as well.  The appearance of these could be quite different from what you might find at a sporting goods store.

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Militaries might have more standardized procedures and procurement for rounds.  They crimp 5.56 over here, too - but you won't see crimped rounds in the belts in movies...

You do have to wonder.  If the box they loaded from was a box of blanks - and they don't find any live rounds otherwise unaccounted for or in the armorers private possession (I'd have to assume the cops would have wondered the same..and asked the armorer about it) - did someone put it there..or was it in the box when they opened it?   Either way, someone...somewhere.. fucked up.

I've seen a few crimped rounds, but very few.  The first time I was taken aback.  I'm just spitballing here, but I don't think most films would used crimped rounds of any kind because that's not what the average person imagines when they think about bullets.