Chad Stahelski, director of the “John Wick” movies, is also interested in the Safety Aspect of guns in his movie and won’t have real ones on set. He knows the risks, since he was Brandon Lee’s stunt double in “The Crow” - the movie where Lee was killed by a real but “empty” revolver.
What happened was this: a scene needed dummy cartridges (bullets and cases, nothing else) so an actor could load his gun, or so the camera could “see” it as loaded.
For some reason the prop crew didn’t get commercial dummies, but made their own by taking real cartridges (which had no business being anywhere near the set), removing the bullets, removing the powder, then replacing the bullets.
However, they forgot the primers.
For non-gun people, the primer is a small explosive charge which sets off the big one. Removing both powder and primer creates an “inert” cartridge - it looks real but can’t possibly go off, because there’s nothing TO go off. Leaving the primer in place still allows a small explosion, and when someone pulled the trigger, that’s what happened.
Nobody noticed the crack as the primer went off (surprising, since it’s quite a loud noise); also, nobody noticed when unloading the “dummies” that one of them no longer had a bullet, so nobody checked to find out where that bullet had gone.
It was still in the gun. With the “dummy” cartridge tightly reassembled, the primer explosion had generated enough pressure to shove the bullet into - but not all the way out of - the revolver’s barrel.
Later, that same revolver, STILL UNCHECKED, was loaded with blank cartridges, which have no bullet, but enough powder to create noise and muzzle-flash (both usually enhanced in post-production). When an actor fired one blank during an action scene, its much greater pressure finished what the primer had started, shooting the bullet all the way out of the barrel.
And into Brandon Lee, who died in hospital a few hours later.
Chad Stahelski is well aware that it could have happened to him. Small wonder he has views about gun safety on movie sets.
He also has views about why Real Guns continue to be used at all: it’s about money. If every movie did it his way, he says, there’d no longer be any demand for the large numbers of Real Guns held by prop suppliers and armourers, making their entire stock worthless to the movie industry.
Yes, they could sell them, but sale of a thing happens just once, renting a thing to film and TV happens over and over again, so there’s a vested interest in not giving up Real Guns and Fake Ammo just yet. After all, compare how few fatal accidents to how many movies and shows with guns in them.
And it’s easy to find another Cillian Murphy…
They can do wonders with CGI nowadays.
ETA: I got a pointer to a video which recreated the Brandon Lee accident. It plays out exactly as described above, with one alarming difference; the bullet came out far harder and went far further into ballistic gel than I (and I think the guy doing the experiment) expected.
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