>>212408129That was pretty common in hollywood movies. There are whole companies that are just licensed armorers for the studios who have a forgotten weapons tier vault full of shit they can slap some plastic and LED's onto to make your movies space gunz.
being able to fire blanks made it look better on screen in an era before digital muzzle flashes.
My personal favorite is the chain gun from the kurt russel soldier movie.
There is behind the scenes footage of him firing that thing on a wiring harness because it would just blast him across the room ass first (and it looks fun as fuck, like one of those water jet packs).