I never quite inderstood what blanks were. Are they bullets that are empty (no gun powder)? Or is it just nothing? But then what makes the sound? What gases?
Although I am not a munitions expert, the blanks do not have the projectile "bullet" in them. It consists of just the shell casing and primer, but I don't know if there is anymore powder.
Anyway, the hammer of the gun falls, igniting the primer and maybe some extra powder in the casing (not sure).
All of this power that is generated has to go somewhere, and the only way it can travel is down and out the barrel of the gun. Now normally, there is a bullet being pushed by all of this gas, but not in a blank.
The gas pushes the bullet w/ sufficeint force to propel it out of the barrel (depending on what handgun your using) around 900 feet per second.
In a blank, there probably isn't as much "power", because it's not necessary to push a bullet out of the barrel, but there still must be sufficent force (in semiautos) to propel the slide back and chamber another round.
In any event, the power needed to chamber the next round in Bozz's M-16 was considerable, and at close range all of the gas (think force) being propelled out of the barrel at I'm sure easily 1,000 f.p.s. would do considerable damage to human skin.
Hope this helps!
I'll take Tom Cruise to block!
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iivuli
21 years ago
I really don't know that much about guns or bullets either, but while doing my military service I did on occasion have to shoot some blanks on an assault rifle and atleast the blanks we used had a wooden "projectile" in the casing which would shatter when hitting the piece of metal attached to the end of the barrel (ie the red thingies in the movie).
I understood that a piece of wood from the "projectile" scratched Paxtons eye or something like that.
As for the question of shooting while Wilson went on a rampage I just think that it would be the easiest time to do it because it could easily be seen as an accident and not a intentional action.
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Ka Ru Fei
21 years ago
and perhaps he thought he was going to die and this was his last chance to save his friend.
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Americansweetheart
21 years ago
They had these little red things in the tips of their guns. Like gun corks. For whatever reason, I have no idea. But when Bozz pulled the trigger, the little thing went into Paxton's eye.
In the movie, Pax said he didn't want to go to war, he just felt that it was his patriotic duty. What I gathered from the movie was that after seeing what Pax went through in Tigerland, Bozz knew he wouldn't survive Vietnam. He also knew that he himself had a better chance, so he went in Paxton's place.
That's just the feeling I was left with after the movie.
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21 years ago
[deleted]
21 years ago
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iivuli
21 years ago
Actually the cap thingie is there because it's necessary for the proper functioning of an automatic weapon. When shooting blanks there isn't enough pressure without it to reload the weapon on it's own.
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taibunsuu-1
21 years ago
Hey all:
Blanks for M-16s are almost just like regular bullets. They have about half the powder used in a bullet and instead of a bullet at the end of the round, the round is crimped closed around a bit of wax.
M-16s have those red safety caps on the end when firing blanks. This is because the weapon's automatic reloading is powered by the hot gasses released from an exploding round. When the rifle fires, the bullet travels ahead of the hot gasses down the barrel. Near the end of the barrel there is a gas port built into the barrel. Some of the gasses shoot into the gas port, and back down an aluminum tube that runs parrelel to the barrel and ends in the rifle's bolt. There the gas pushes the bolt backwards against a spring. When the bolt moves backward it ejects the spent round's shell. It comes to a stop at the back, at which time a massive spring in the stock pushes the bolt forward again, where it pushes a fresh round up and out of the magazine and forward into the rifle's chamber. The bolt locks behind the bullet, the firing pin hits the bullet's firing cap, the round explodes, hot gasses travel forward then back down the tube, unlocking the bolt, throwing it back, and repeating the whole process.
Since a blank round doesn't fire with as much compression as a regular round, the cap is placed on the end of the barrel to increase the gas compression so that the weapon will cycle as described above.
I found that the M-16 doesn't really need the safety cap to regularly fire blanks, but there's a secondary reason for the cap: um, safety, lol.
In a training environenment steps are taken to keep the soldiers safe. They're not using bullets, but the hot gasses coming out of the rifle barrels are enough to injure someone's eyes. The safety cap allows gasses to escape, but they escape through the gas ports on the side of the muzzle cap. These muzzle caps are used to reduce barrel rise from cyclic firing and also to diminish the muzzle flash produced when firing a round.
Also the safety cap is used so that if a real round is accidentally loaded along with the blanks, no one will be hit by it. The rifle barrel may explode, but there's less chance of someone being severely wounded by the shrapnel than there is from someone being hit with a 5.52 millimeter ball round that leaves the barrel at 3,100 feet per second.
Also you can see Bozz put the side of the safety cap to his friend's face so that the gasses coming out the side would hit him in the eye.
Anyway, this is a lot about a trivial movie scene.
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buzman072
21 years ago
1000 or 3100 feet per second can really do some serious damage even with a blank.
Have you ever been shot by a paintball gun at point blank range? A paintball generally travels at 190-210 fps, and at point blank, that can really hurt and give you some nice welts.
So imagine gas or the wood projectiles or w/e at 1000 or 3100 fps.
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