“Baldwin could have — if he’d taken a basic NRA gun safety course — easily checked the weapon and determined if it was loaded or not.”
Checking if a single action is loaded with only blanks is not difficult. But time consuming. It requires completely unloading and reloading the firearm.
I thought I read here a few days ago that Alec’s father was a weapons instructor at some high school.
If you look at the front of the cylinder while spinning it you can see if the cartridges are crimped or have wads. Blanks are easily recognizable from live rounds because you can see the bullets on live ammo.
a “cold gun” means “NO blanks” not no LIVE ROUNDS
open the gate and spin the cylinder to look for live primers is all that was required...
?
Make sure the barrel is pointed in a safe direction, quarter-cock the hammer to free the cylinder, and then rotate the cylinder to look through the front of each chamber for the crimped shell ends.