Here’s an article that claims to demonstrate that Skene adn David Blaine have both performed the actual trick claimed on That’s Incredible. The Bullet Catch by Ricky Smith | Conjuring Arts I don’t know enough about magic and illusions to know whether this is more bullshit or if these two men really did what they claimed.
Here’s a tip about magic tricks in general: The term “The _____ trick”, for any value of the blank, is always a misnomer. By their very nature, what you think you see in a magic trick isn’t what’s actually happening, and one corollary of that is that, just because two tricks look the same, doesn’t mean that they actually are.
I think it’s pretty clear that Blaine and Skene both did it for real as in it was a stunt rather than a trick. It wasn’t the traditional trick in which they pretend to catch a bullet in their teeth. They both used a steel box to catch a small caliber bullet. Here is Blaine’s version. At the 40 second mark or so I recognize the guy. He is a paramedic that recently taught me a class on traumatic injury. That means nothing I just found it interesting.
In the mid to late 19th Century, a travelling magician performed the trick in a Western Frontier town. An enthusiastic audience member, mistaking it for a real act, stood up and said “catch this.” He drew his gun and shot the guy dead.
You can actually fire a .22 without any gunpowder, just the primer, which can lead to incredibly low muzzle velocities of 350 ft/s and only 10 foot pounds of force.
People have also been shot with a .22 in the head and fallen down dead, too. That proves… what? Probably where the bullet hits is a big factor in what happens to the person hit.
They’ve flat out said they never do any tricks that are actually dangerous.
I also can tell you how they do their bullet catch (or at least the one I’ve seen them do a few times on TV), if you want. Spoilers if you don’t want to know:
They drop the bullet in the stand, which allows it to slide backstage, where someone else takes the bullet and adds the rifling, and then sneaks it into the vest that Teller wears. It’s always arranged where that could happen without you being able to see. Then they use breakaway glass or similar and guns set up just to make noise and not really shoot. Oh, and the lasers don’t line up with the true aim, as an extra precaution.
You just have to watch it enough times to figure it out.
There is no such thing as “foot-pounds of force”. Foot-pounds can be torque, but probably what you mean here is energy. But energy doesn’t snap necks, either. Momentum might, but the momentum of bullets is a lot less than most people think (if it weren’t, shooters would be knocked over, too).
Since you didn’t name names, I’ll mention that the cases were Brandon Lee and Jon-Erik Hexum. Though in Brandon Lee’s case, the round was a blank, but a bullet had accidentally got lodged in the barrel.
Saw a very recent TV special in which Blaine did this stunt and some tricks. He was using .22LR ammunition and a purpose-made mouth guard. The mouth guard shattered but the bullet stayed in the steel cup. Another version of the mouth guard, in which the technician who made it had confidence that it would hold up, also shattered.