A Texas man accidentally shot a child while officiating a wedding in Lancaster County on Saturday, the sheriff’s office says.
Chief Deputy Ben Houchin said deputies were sent to a wedding at Hillside Events near Denton on a report of a gunshot wound.
Deputies learned that 62-year-old Michael Gardner, the wedding’s officiant, fired a gun to get everyone’s attention.
“He was going to fire in the air, and as he did that, it slipped and went off,” Houchin said.
The gun was loaded with a blank that Gardner made with gunpowder and glue.
If it was a blank, how can you hit someone with it?
Just because the cartridge doesn’t have a bullet doesn’t mean nothing comes out of the business end.
With a properly functioning blank, there shouldn’t be any projectile coming out of the muzzle. This guy made his own with gunpowder and glue, so apparently there was some kind of glue blob that was a projectile.
The force of the expanding gas is sufficient to hurt people, even with a properly made blank. It’s why a gun designed to fire only blanks doesn’t even have a barrel with an opening that could compress the gas.
It’s why you generally avoid firing a gun of any sort in a crowd. Even when they’re as safe as possible, they’re not safe.
Because it’s a bullet without the bullet - it’s still a directed explosion that could kill someone with air pressure alone if you’re close enough
Now let’s say there’s something in the barrel, or in this case a chunk of glue from a home made blank propelled out at the speed of a bullet. It’s a lot less force or energy than a piece of lead, but everything is pretty deadly when it’s going faster than the speed of sound
Ask Brandon Lee.
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