From other reports, somehow there was a real bullet left in the barrel (from missfire or something??). Then when they put in the blank, the real bullet (or fragment) was pushed out of the barrel by the gases and wad from the blank.
I have heard of this when folks use bad ammo and the round doesn’t have enough energy to push the bullet all the way out of the barrel. Although I always thought then what happens is you blow out your barrel or the receiver?? (Although perhaps that is because you are shooting a bullet into a stuck bullet, and not just gases and a wad???)
My Dad and would fire a shotgun (into ground) as a New Years celebration. One year he was given reloads to try out. Exactly that happened. One failed to fire properly and the next blew the barrel up. It looked like a cartoon depiction, all flared out. I later found the end of the barrel, years later, when clearing brush quite a distance away. After that he only shot brass reloads he made himself. I’d never seen my dad so shook.
The story I heard about the Crow death was that in an earlier situation they bought ammo, removed the powder but not the primer, replaced the bullet and when fired the primer was just strong enough to push the round into the barrel where it remained until the blank firing sent it on its way.
Two types of cartridges were used on the movie set for “The Crow”.
1. Blanks — powder, but no bullet
2. REduced carts — yes, there is a bullet, but the cart has only a partial load of powder. Just enough powder to “supposedly” push the bullet out of the barrel. Enough to get the special effect needed by the camera, but not enough to risk a ricochet.
The scheme on the “Crow” set was for a reduced round to be used in a wild gun fight to blow apart a vase across the room. The gun fight proceeded — lots of rounds (blanks) used by every damned fool thug in the room.
Apparently, no one noticed that the vase was untouched. I supposed everyone assumed that the shot went wild.
Next round in line (gun is revolver) was a blank — with a full load of powder.
However, the bullet did not get pushed out of the barrel as expected — it was lodged — sparing the vase. So, when the blank was fired (with gun pointed at actor) the bullet went into his chest.
Oops.
The mistake was not pausing the shoot between the first and 2nd round and assuring that the bullet was not lodged in the barrel. Low odds that this could happen, but large consequences on the bad assumption.
This might be the same sort of thing that happened on the “rust” set with Baldwin. But, if it did, the people in charge apparently didn’t learn anything from previous killing. Must have adopted the typical liberal viewpoint: “at this point, what does it matter?” AKA: history doesn’t matter.