Why weren’t they using stage guns? Stage guns won’t fire a live round via chamber and barrel restrictions.
We’ve been to Tombstone before....every street corner has “cowboys” hawking how their gunfight show is better than the guys’ down the street - there are at least a half dozen.
The shows in Tombstone don’t pay so great. Most of these guys use their own everything, the clothes the gun the whole deal. And they usually do multiple shows a day, they’re not green, and they’re pretty solid on safety. Going to be interesting what the investigation finds. These are folks who know better, and have done this hundreds or thousands of times without incident.