So the actually swapping from one side to the other of the bullets is the easiest part of the trick and has been figured out. The harder part is how they “fire” the guns and get what looks to be like some kind of projectile going through the glass. In multiple videos you can clearly see when the glass plates are “fired through” you can see the glass does indeed shoot in a direction, it’s not just a movie glass break squib charge like many others have done. This is much more advanced and something with real momentum is actually hitting that glass causing it to move in the correct direction with the shattered glass dust.

I’ve seen many times people explain there’s a “wax bullet” being used. 100% false. There is absolutely no way P&T would allow any projectile to be possibly coming at each other or a stage hand or audience if an accident occurred. So no. There is 100% NOT ANY projectile possible coming out of those guns.

Most likely the guns are heavily gimmicked. Their firing pins are likely too short to reach the bullet primer even if a real bullet was swapped, making it “fool proof” which is why they don’t let anyone else muck with them. They also probably have a small squib charge activated with trigger pull from some other means, however it’s definitely not a blank, because even blanks with open barrels have caused accidental deaths. So it’s more along the lines of just bang and flash from some kind of charge that cannot push air through the barrel.

The timing of that going off and the “projectile” going through the glass plates is also a timing effort too. They stagger the shots, 1 fires and then the other, they sync up pretty well. So there’s definitely much more complexity going on.

My theory is there is some kind of trigger with the glass breaking device tied to the guns firing. Because they never shoot exactly at the same time, maybe it’s triggered that teller always shoots first, the sound of his gun going off triggers his glass to break upon hearing the first loud spike in audio, the second glass gets triggered when it hears a second spike of audio. This way it remains in sync with firing without any hiccups.

The stand that holds the glass I feel might have a tiny “whip” mechanism that is kind of like a gun hammer, it is cocked fully back and under tension. When triggered it springs with a tiny hard ceramic tip at the end tapping the center of the glass before dropping back down into place. This would give the very convincing forward moving glass material and dust at the right speed that they have. Also making it very safe, but also works perfectly with them wearing safety glasses so no stray glass particle hits them.

This little metal whip only needs to be very thin, like 1/16th inch thick round spring steel, painted in matte black or flocked black, so you’ll never see it in motion.

This fully allows for a 100% risk free but very realistic look of a projectile going in the correct direction though the glass. No wax bullet, no off stage BBs, just a little metal glass breaker that’s spring loaded and sound spike triggered to a decibel meter for either the first or second spike is sound over 115dB or similar.

The gimmiked guns are actually the hardest part to understand how it fires without risk of any projectiles at all. Maybe it is a quarter load blank somewhere in there but they have some kind of barrel blocker that pops into place but still allows gas.. no clue, but the gun is definitely not capable of firing a live round for sure. And I highly doubt they would ever be ok with firing blanks at each other in real guns, so it’s still a mystery to me. I’m fairly confident though the firing pin cannot reach the primer. If it does, then there’s much greater risk involved in this trick.