Well, there was that actor in the early 80s who offed himself by holding a gun with blanks to his head. I was in cadets at the time; we got a VERY long speech from our range officer about the dangers of blanks after that.
Oh yeah well a blank is basically a round with the bullet taken out and some light wadding (paper, cotton, etc) put in its place to stop all the powder leaking out. And the wadding gets fired.
In most cases it slows down to nothing pretty quickly or is burned up. But at point blank range, a piece of cotton travelling at 700m/s will still fuck you up before it stops.
As a very general rule you really shouldn't ever test - at the kind of range you'd normally be shooting, a blank is probably safe. But at point blank you're fucked.
Well, there was that actor in the early 80s who offed himself by holding a gun with blanks to his head. I was in cadets at the time; we got a VERY long speech from our range officer about the dangers of blanks after that.
Oh yeah well a blank is basically a round with the bullet taken out and some light wadding (paper, cotton, etc) put in its place to stop all the powder leaking out. And the wadding gets fired.
In most cases it slows down to nothing pretty quickly or is burned up. But at point blank range, a piece of cotton travelling at 700m/s will still fuck you up before it stops.
At inches away from the muzzle the expanding gasses will fuck you up.
That too.
As a very general rule you really shouldn't ever test - at the kind of range you'd normally be shooting, a blank is probably safe. But at point blank you're fucked.