@road: real ammo is not forbidden on set, often it is necessary to shoot real bullets for closeups or else the result does not look realistic. It is forbidden in certain situations (eg if you’ll shoot at a person or inside a building)
Prop gun, basically means “property of the theater” gun, it’s for all intents and purposes a real gun. Baldwin cheaper out and spent 8000 on the armorer, 5000 on the ammo and a few thousand on the guns while paying himself $250k and a chunk from the profits, which was planned to make him another $650k. So he was going to make nearly a million dollars and cheaped out on everyone else.
For a Western, that is a very low budget for armorer and gun safety. Given ammo is very expensive these days, you’re on a very tight budget, having custom ammo made is very expensive, just the smoke stuff costs >$1/blank in 9mm, for a “western” revolver we’re talking probably .36 or any of the Colt caliber black powder which is >$3/blank or even more if it’s a revolver with a caliber that is no longer in common production.
So you do a few takes with the classic shootout scenes, shoot a few hundred bullets every take, you’ve just gone through your entire budget, so closeups may use a cheaper “real” bullet available on the open market for cost reasons. You can create realism with black powder, some chemicals to make the flash and a small object, but it’s still dangerous (Brandon Lee got killed by one of these) and even more expensive ($15/bullet is not unheard of).
