That means that unless Alec checked the gun himself, that gun was rigged to kill. In other words, this wasn't Russian Roulette.
I understand Halls calling out Cold Gun...but that was a lie...because he said he did NOT check all the chambers.
And exactly HOW do check check for a dummy shell? Do you have to pull it and replace it after looking at the tip?
AFAIK with this type of revolver the only way to safely check if a round is live is to take it out of the cylinder.
But even if the round was a blank it would be unsafe to fire while the gun was pointing towards anyone, or simply forward of the muzzle, especially at close range.
It only takes a few seconds to spin the cylinder to check all the chambers are empty. Baldwin didn’t bother.
I had read that these particular dummy rounds have a small hole on the SIDE of the bullet, which indicate it is a dummy round. So yes, you would have to remove each and every bullet to check that they are indeed dummy rounds.
For this reason, I can’t see the advantage of pre-loading the gun. It would be faster to load the dummy rounds just prior to using the gun, than to pre-load it, and then have to unload it again to check for the holes on the sides of the bullets.