I am in a Old West re-enactment group, and we use real, live firearms firing black powder blanks. I am also the Safety Officer, and my responsibilities include weapons checks, issuing blanks and making damn sure no one has any live ammo at the performance site. The blank-firing only guns take a special sized blank to ensure no live ammo can be loaded in the gun. The guns themselves are cheap and prone to malfunction which is why our group elected not to use them.