Prop guns can kill too people!

Today I was sent a couple of links (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,452811,00.html and http://www.sltrib.com/ci_10999643) to a story about a 17 year old in Utah who accidentally shot himself with a blank gun. While real prop guns are set up so that bullets are not supposed to be able to leave the barrel, they still release a gas discharge that is powerful enough to do major damage to body parts and also kill some one in some cases. There is a reason why you only put prop gun in the hands of trained professionals. Because even though there are freak accidents, trained professionals know how to limit the chances of said accidents from occurring. The fact that in this case the young man died of head injuries, leads me to believe he was not following the strict safety guidelines one should follow in the use of prop weapons. Especially, since the first thing I was taught was never to point a gun(prop or otherwise) at some one unless I actually was prepared to kill that individual. There is no reason the gun should have been close enough to his head to have killed him, in my opinion, but as I was not present and do not know the details, I can only speculate at this time.

Please, anyone out there listening! When dealing with weapons for theatre, please hire a trained professional to over see the use of the weapons. Do not intrust this duty to an untrained person no matter how intelligent they may seem!