>>11026466
It's simple. It's a real gun, that fired a real bullet. There's a gas cloud where you'd expect it, the gun is about 75% of the way through the cycle, with the slide returning to battery. His grip never left the gun.
A few confirmation points. The shot was heard hundreds of feet away…as one would expect from a duty load. The round in the air appears to be nickel plated…expensive defensive ammo are nickel plated to improve reliability.
It's a trick of the light that the casing looks like it has a projectile still in it. Simunitions don't eject live cartridges or have live rounds anywhere near the gun…WAY too dangerous.
This looks like what it claims to be. A guy fired a pistol and the photo caught that mid-flight. In bright daylight the exposure could've been 1/1,000 , 1/2,000 , even 1/4,000 of a second. Which would freeze everything but the projectile, even at pistol velocities. At 1,100 fps a 9mm projectile would cover a foot in the exposure time…you wouldn't see it. Need at least ten times faster exposure to even hope to see the round.
Some things are what they are.