Is Shooting Blanks at a Pistol Range a Thing?

[Wondering Beard]

I have used "dummy rounds" at an indoor range on many occasions. There are plenty of very good training related reasons to do this. Now that the whole '.32 rounds mixed in with 9mm' comes to light, I kind of doubt that's what happened in this case. However, it doesn't change the fact that inert training rounds have great utility at pretty much any shooting venue.

Sure, as part of shooting practice using dummy rounds along with real ammo make sense. Going to the range just to shoot dummy rounds or blanks? not so much.

[blues]

Maybe it's a paternity case and the plaintiff is alleging the defendant impregnated her at the range. His defense is that he was shooting blanks.

(I'll be here all week.)

[mmc45414]

9mm will chamber and fire in .40 pistols though it will cause malfunctions.

I, I mean some guy I know, did that once. It was surprisingly normal, though the gun didn't cycle.

[NH Shooter]

@blues beat me to it. I've been firing blanks for about 20 years, but only at my private bedroom range.

[edison]

Maybe your client meant wax bullets? Like what they use for cowboy fast draw? Maybe foam ear plug bullets? Not blanks, but also not normally lethal.

[Darth_Uno]

In my entire shooting “career”, I’ve fired exactly six .38 blanks. And while I’m not sure I’ve made it to the hundreds yet, at least tens of thousands of rounds of ball (FMJ) ammo.

I do not know of a single person who fires blanks for any sort of practice. Not saying they don’t exist...just never heard of it.

[OlongJohnson]

I am reluctant to give all the details. But suffice to say, it was a remark that couldn't be part of any defense, it was just a small part of a larger conversation about someone's use of a gun over the years. When someone is nervous and being questioned, they say weird things, that really doesn't help them, and hurts them as far as being believable about the more critical issues. And I could just have the one in a million oddball that shoots blanks at a range. Gun in question is a Ruger P89 loaded with 9mm and .32 bullets at the time it was seized.

We seized a pistol once that had 9mm Parabellum, .380 and 9mm Makarov ammo all in the same magazine.

I'm sure about that part. I want to say the pistol in question was actually a .40, but I might be wrong about that.

IME mixed ammo / wrong caliber ammo in a gun is a red flag associated with criminal activity.

I've read before of a firearm being seized from a criminal type loaded with multiple different calibers of ammo. The quote was something along the lines of, "It doesn't matter, any bullet will work." My mind went straight to the bolded part above.

[Baldanders]

.32acp in a 9mm mag is certainly proof of low competence in handling firearms.

OTOH, this is a forum with a user base that is pretty precise about terminology. Maybe "blanks" meant something else, like "dummies," as others in the thread have postulated.

It usually takes me a few minutes(when I am talking to students who are low fluency)to pull out actual details of firearm stories I hear. I have to ask a lot of questions. Usually their "first pass" is fairly incoherent. It is possible something similar is happening here.

I don't know where to buy blanks, either. And I've been shooting for over 30 years.

[OlongJohnson]

Someone mentioned rimfire blanks earlier. Just to note, they are readily available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder-actuated_tool

https://www.homedepot.com/b/Tools-Po...s/N-5yc1vZc2b8

They are also what would typically be used in a non-projectile-firing "starter pistol." It's also possible to use them to fire a .22 airgun pellet from a .22 pistol as a breech-loading single shot, or so I've read.

Interesting detail that the .17 WSM cartridge came about because Winchester was making a .25 caliber rimfire blank for construction tools and decided to expand that production by developing an actual firearm cartridge.

[TGS]

If the P89 magazine was loaded with 9mm--AND .32 ACP--then you are already so far outside of the realm of statistical probability that firing blanks at the range is no longer even hard to believe. That's just......I don't even know. It suggests incompetence on a scale that passes dangerous, or a level of eccentricity on par with Willy Wonka.

Either way, I wish you good luck.

Not terribly uncommon with criminals. I'd even say indicative of such activity, as opposed to simply being an ignorant but otherwise law abiding gun owner.

A garden-variety 9mm loaded with 32 and being referred to as a "Glock Fo-tay with dum dums that will go through a cops vest" is pretty stereotypical for the criminal subset of society.

I'm guessing the person in possession of this gun in question was on his way to church, minding his own business and dint'du'nuffin.