There is already people who supply the film/tv industry here with blankfirers, they have done it for years. Its not a huge market anyway.

Have you got a market for it or are you just thinking it would be a good idea?

If you're planning to do it, have you already made contact with anyone in the film/TV industry?

If you can't find information on anyone doing this, maybe you could find out from RTE or similar, who they get in when they need them?

Frnk21 wrote: »

Really? I couldn't find any companies offering blank firing guns for film/theater, could you provide some links?

Talk to Joe Condren. He is a stuntman and also provides[ed] firearms for many Irish Film/TV productions. Dunno is he still in the trade.
He is/was a firearms dealer, which is a prerequisite for this , as you are going to be handling what are essentially still looked on as restricted firearms under the law, and with the new EU directive on a prohibition on select-fire weapons that have been converted to blank-firing prop guns, it will be almost a requirement

Have a look on stunt register Ireland for contact details.

It's still doable,but it would be a VERY hard row to hoe in the first couple of years to get in some sort of money.I don't think you can even go straight away to restricted dealer either.

AGS, DOJ and Revenue want to see you making some sort of trade, turnover or loss before they clear you for the full restricted dealership,or so I'm told, to prevent lads just using it as an excuse to buy and stockpile what they fancy without bothering with licenses.

You'd really want to do your homework on this one as a viable business starting as a newbie in this. Frankly,I can't see that much of a market for just prop gun rental to the Irish entertainment industry. As a sideline maybe to something else related like a pyrotechnician, explosive expert, etc,but I cant see us producing enough films, scripts etc to warrant a supply of blank firing arms...

PLUS...And people in the entertainment industry and re-enactors in the EU are only waking up to this now. You cant convert any former select fire or machine guns to blank-firing props anymore either.:(

They are now, as are the current stock out there, CAT A Prohibited firearms under the EU gun ban directive. Courtsey of the religion of peace proponents using shoddily converted AK clones in the Bataclan/Paris massacres. And the EU Gods never considered this little problem either for exemptions.

So that leaves you with the right problem if the script calls for some latest Gucci kit firearm and you are filming here. Under this new legislation, doing a film like "Saving Pvt Ryan" would be a nightmare, if not impossible in the EU anymore.

There was a guy on that combat dealers show the other night, he is employed by the British and Hollywood film industry to supply the guns and do the pyrotechnics and all that. There seems to be good money in it, but i would think you would want to know your stuff, and be more than someone who shows up with a case of pistols and drops them off.

This guy was ex-services and was able to drill the actors how to do things in a realistic way.

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Yup, as well as coach the actors that even blank firers can be just as deadly as real ones.
Ask Brandon Lee about that one..oh well, you can't as he shot himself in the head with a blank-firing pistol on the set of the Crow 2 and a bit f the blank entered his skull and killed him.

To be fair, the blanks were just normal rounds with the powder removed but yeah you can still kill yourself with modern blank guns. If you got some safety qualification or some trainer course, it would probably be best.

Grizzly 45 wrote: »

Ask Brandon Lee about that one..oh well, you can't as he shot himself in the head with a blank-firing pistol on the set of the Crow 2 and a bit f the blank entered his skull and killed him.

At least 3 thongs you said there disagree with the alleged incident.

He was shot by another actor. Shooting your self in head with a blank wouldn't be scripted I imagine. He was shot in the stomach.

He bullet was loaded with dummy rounds (bullet but no powder) for close up. When they'd swapped to black. The bullet from the dummy round was dislodged and stayed in the barrel, and was propedded my the blank when fired at him from across the room.


Or at least that the official story. All sorts of claims of swapped rounds existed.

Yup got that one mixed up. Thought it was Lee who was shot in the head.
From Allthatisintresting.com

The Death Of Brandon Lee
The role was to star in the action film The Crow as Eric Draven, a murdered rockstar who returns from the dead to exact revenge on the gang that killed him and his girlfriend. Since the character’s death is pivotal to his arc in the movie, the scene in which he dies was saved for the latter part of the production. But it would end in Brandon Lee’s actual demise.
The scene was supposed to be simple: director Alex Proyas intended for Lee to walk through a doorway carrying a grocery bag and costar Michael Massee would fire blanks at him from 15 feet away. Lee would then flip a switch fitted to the bag which would activate “squibs” (which are essentially small fireworks) that then simulated bloody bullet wounds.
“It wasn’t the first time they tried the scene,” a police spokesperson said after the event. The gun had been made specially by the props team to simulate realistic rounds, but on that fateful night in March, it was loaded with a dummy bullet from a previous scene.

The gun was only supposed to fire blanks, but that dummy bullet had become lodged inside without anyone noticing. Even though it wasn’t a real bullet, the force with which the dummy was unlodged was comparable to that of a real one. When Massee fired, unknowingly, Lee was struck in the stomach and two arteries were immediately severed.
Lee collapsed on set and was rushed to the hospital. He was in surgery for six hours, but to no avail. He died at 1:04 p.m on March 31.

Police initially believed that the squibs rigged on to Lee’s person had caused his wounds. “When the other actor fired a shot, the explosive charge went off inside the bag,” said officer Michael Overton. “After that, we don’t know what happened.”

But the doctor who performed emergency surgery on Lee vehemently disagreed with this account. Dr. Warren W. McMurry of the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in North Carolina, where Brandon Lee died, concluded that the fatal injuries were consistent with a bullet wound. “I felt that that was what we were most likely dealing with,” he said.

Indeed, even professionals in the industry, like Lee’s close friend John Soet, were unconvinced that a squib charge could do such damage.

“I’ve worked in films and directed a few low-budget features,” he said. “As powerful as squibs are, I can’t recall a single incident where anyone was injured by them. Generally, they are pretty powerful. They do carry a hefty explosive charge. If you are not well-padded, you can get a bruise.”

Dr. McMurry added that he saw no signs indicative of an explosion and that the entry wound was the size of a silver dollar.

According to Dr. McMurry, the projectile had made a straightforward path to Lee’s spine where X-rays indeed showed a lodged metal object. The Wilmington Police Department consequently classified the incident as an “accidental shooting.”


from Earlier in the shoot, a prop guy went down to their local prop shop to buy items for the production, during which he also purchased a set of live bullets which he took back to the set of The Crow. As live rounds should never be kept on a film set, the film’s prop master removed them and stored them in the trunk of his own car. As live bullets are never used in films, guns are loaded with blanks which are bullet cases filled with primer – a form of gunpowder – that creates the firing effect. Unlike a real bullet, however, blanks have a cardboard tip on the end rather than a lead one, so that any impact the bullet would have once fired from a gun would be minimal if any. During a scene in which a victim looks down the barrel of a gun being loaded, it was discovered that there were no blanks on set. In an effort to save time, the prop guys took the live bullets from the car and modified them into blanks, also creating dummy rounds – which didn’t have gunpowder but kept the lead tip – to be used for close-ups. Unbeknownst to anyone on set, when the dummy round was loaded into the gun for that shot, the lead tip got lodged in the barrel.

Two weeks later, on March 30th, that same gun was used for the scene where Brandon Lee was to be shot by Michael Massee’s character Funboy. The scene called for Lee to walk into his apartment, and then activate a squib – a packet of blood that would simulate the gunshot wound – once Massee fired the gun and fall to the ground. Everything went as planned. The gun went off, the squib went off, and Lee fell down. It wasn’t until after Proyas called cut that anyone realised Lee wasn’t moving. In fact, he was losing a tonne of blood from a silver dime-sized bullet wound. Unfortunately, when the gun with the blank was fired it also propelled the lead tip that had been lodged there two weeks earlier, hitting Lee in his abdomen just above his navel.





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Either which way,working with prop guns,blank-firing or others.you still need to be damn careful with them.