/PRNewswire/ Rock Island Auction Company (RIAC), the world s No. 1 firearms auction house, will offer former President Theodore Roosevelt s Smith & Wesson.
shocked. it is loud. they don t have ear plugs in. the gun was supposed to be empty. i was told i was handed an empty gun. i thought to myself did she faint? the notion that there was a live round in that gun did not dawn on me until about 45 minutes to an hour later. the attorney for the assistant director says he maintains he didn t see baldwin pull the trigger and baldwin did not have his finger on the trigger. theatrical firearms safety expert steve wolf says why he finds that not likely. not plausible. on the single action revolver, when you pull that hammer back, click, click, click. now the hammer is set. when you pull that back and let go, you can see i am not holding this, the hammer doesn t go anywhere. he says if baldwin s finger was resting on the trigger when
that we didn t miss anything and that you re comfortable with the fact that it is, in fact, an empty firearm. and i m comfortable. wonderful. reporter: this is what a blank looks like. it s a cartridge case that s crimped over. you can see there s no projectile. reporter: no bullet or projectile. no bullet or projectile. it has gun powder. it does have gun powder. it has a primer in it. this is what s called a modern theatrical blank. reporter: but under safety regulations, such a bullet is a dummy cartridge? empty shell case, no gun powder in it, totally inert primer. it can t go bang. there is a projectile on the end of it. but you can see, there s a bb. i can rattle it next to your ear. no gun powder in it. if means that cannot go bang. reporter: there many other mandated precautions. so we have our single-action revolver. we have our blank cartridge. you can see there is no projectile. i ve measured out 20 feet for you here, which is the minimum-safety
it does have gun powder. it has a primer in it. this is what s called a modern theatrical blank. reporter: but under safety regulations, such a bullet is a dummy cartridge? empty shell case, no gun powder in it, totally inert primer. it can t go bang. there is a projectile on the end of it. but you can see, there s a bb. i can rattle it next to your ear. no gun powder in it. if means that cannot go bang. reporter: there many other mandated precautions. so we have our single-action revolver. we have our blank cartridge. you can see there is no projectile. i ve measured out 20 feet for you here, which is the minimum-safety distance on a film set. we have a target there. i am going to load up the blank into the gun, and i am going to announce that the gun is hot. so, hot gun on set. and it s a hot gun when there s something in the gun, in the chambers that will go bang?
the idea is we have the cups here in this white background because we are going to show this can make a lot of noise but there s going to be no residue, and no cups knocked over because this is not a live bullet. reporter: exactly. it is a blank cartridge. so i will give you a countdown here. three, two, one. no residue, no cups. created the illusion that you want in hollywood without a bullet coming out. correct. reporter: we are at the independent studio services prop house north of los angeles. props which they say include north america s largest private armory. safety in the industry starts with a lock box for weapons. the gun that we are going to use is inside here. this is a single-action revolver. you can see that at the moment, it s empty. and you keep turning it so we re sure it s empty. so, i show you this particular one has six cylinders. i will always click it over seven times just to make sure