Safety
The appearance of a blank cartridge can give a false sense of safety. Although blank cartridges do not contain a bullet, precautions are still required because fatalities and severe injuries have resulted on occasions when blank cartridges have been fired at very close ranges.
Blank cartridges frequently contain a paper, wood or plastic plug called a wad which seals the powder in the case. This wad can cause severe penetrating wounds at close range and bruising at medium ranges. There is also "muzzle blast" - a cloud of hot, expanding gas expelled at extremely high velocity from the muzzle of the firearm. This high velocity gas can inflict severe injury (see powerhead for an example) at close ranges. Additionally, if there is any small debris lodged inside the barrel it will be expelled at a velocity similar to that of a bullet, with the ability to inflict a severe or lethal wound. Additionally, the extremely loud noise of blanks being fired can damage the hearing of people in the immediate area.
Note that cartridges loaded with wadcutter target bullets and cartridges for the Nagant revolver can be mistaken for blanks because the bullet does not protrude past the mouth of the cartridge casing. Shotshell cartridges known as "snake shot" or "rat-shot" used in rifles or handguns for pest control often have the shot charge sealed with cardboard or plastic wads or the ends may be crimped or folded in a manner similar to that of blank cartridges.
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Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion. He becomes a perjurer, all his thoughts and emotions being directed with reference, not to an accurate and just appraisal of the real world but rather to the safety and exaltation of his loved one, and the madness with which he pursues her, transmogrifying his attention, blinds him like a victim.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman;... but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)