A rare & interesting conversation at work....

I'm not sure how but Brandon Lee came into conversation today, as did his death. I remembered vaguely that he died during production but didn't know much about the details.

As a firearms instructor, I was fascinated to learn that it wasn't just a live ammo vs. dummy ammo mistake...

From Wiki...

...a cartridge with only a primer and a bullet was fired in a pistol; this caused a squib load, in which the primer provided enough force to push the bullet out of the cartridge and into the barrel of the revolver, where it became stuck. The malfunction went unnoticed by the crew, and the same gun was used again later to shoot the death scene, having been re-loaded with blanks. However, the squib load was still lodged in the barrel, and was propelled by the blank cartridge's explosion out of the barrel and into Lee's body. Although the bullet was traveling much slower than a normally fired bullet would be, the bullet's large size and the nearly point-blank firing distance made it powerful enough to severely wound Lee as cameras were rolling at the Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina.

A textbook case for using a blank firing gun. Prop guns like that are not able to fire real cartridges.

An interesting footnote to that story, the actor who shot and killed Brandon Lee, Michael Massee, played Ira Gaines in 24.