With a SA revolver, it is easy to check for ammo. It is also very easy to see if they are blanks or not. And for practice? You can totally unload the gun and practice 1,000 times with ZERO chance of injury to anyone. Unless you drop it on your foot!
Modern SAA (Single Action Army) revolvers have a safety built in to prevent accidental discharge through dropping or hitting the hammer (I have a Ruger Super Blackhawk and Blackhawk in 41 Magnum).
If this is a true replica, the firing pin is built into the hammer. Used to have a true 45 Long Colt SAA. Had to be careful, and carry with an empty chamber under the hammer.
The scene called for dummy rounds, not blanks or an empty cylinder. It's obvious now that no one checked the weapon.
3D animation of Colt Single Action
Suggest muting sound as is only bad music
**It is also very easy to see if they are blanks or not.***
At an amusement park near here several years back I noticed the shooting revolvers had black brass cases. All the other non-firing revolvers were front loading revolvers with the nipples removed.
Hmmm, I think I might disagree with this a bit. Or I'm missing something, and you could school me.
I'll assume you are not going to point that muzzle towards yourself to see the front of the bullets in the cylinders to see if they are in there, and try to ascertain that what is in the end is not bullets by cotton wading.
So, if you are keeping the barrel pointed at the floor (into a sand trap box, possibly) you could easily tell if the gun was loaded by flipping the loading gate open and revolving the cylinder - BUT - that would not easily tell you if the rounds were blanks or live (seeing as that's only really obvious from the business end, not the primer end.)
Perhaps I'm missing something. I've thought about this since the accident, and decided that if I were handed a loaded Single Action Army clone on a film set I would probably unload it to verify they were blanks, and then reload it myself.