Part of that forensic report (as reported by TMZ) makes no sense at all. It says the gun could have fired a primer by fiddling with the hammer but not fired a bullet. WTF does that mean?
Indeed. I stumbled over that myself. Must be some kind of ignorant translation of a technical point, per Hawkmoon's remarks above.
And I don't know about you, but I dread the thought of a hammer slipping out from under my thumb, half-cock notches, hammer friction grooves, and transfer bars notwithstanding.
He was the producer of Rust, so I assume he had some role in the hiring. I wonder if this means not even he would hire himself now?
Sign on President Truman's desk (may be a reproduction):
I'm also familiar with the danger of keeping a live round under the hammer of one of those antique single-actions, and I don't have a hard time imagining fiddling with the hammer and having it snap down weakly on a live round primer and making it detonate anyway.
Hence, incidentally, my aforementioned dread of having a hammer slip out from under my thumb because it happened to a cousin's uncle's son. Did not go off, but left a perceptible dent on the cartridge primer,
not unlike the dent from firing pin inertia in semi auto firearms*.
This was long ago, when my cousin's uncle's son was new to firearms, and my cousin's uncle's son researched the matter further in actual printed books. Nonte's, I believe my cousin's uncle's son said.
Terry, 230RN
* NOTE Primer sensitivity varies. See
Hatcher page 394 for some notes on this. I was told once that foreign Berdan ammo has primers with harder cups than US standards to avoid slam-firing in their semi auto arms.
