The phrase "an empty gun" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used in contexts discussing firearms, safety, or metaphorically to describe a situation lacking power or effectiveness.
Example: "In a tense standoff, the police discovered that the suspect was holding an empty gun, rendering him less of a threat."
Alternatives: "a unloaded firearm" or "a blank weapon".
But, almost masochistically, he deliberately uses an empty gun and is shot down by the police.
At midnight, Judah lifts an empty gun and pulls the trigger and at the same moment, in the sealed room, King falls back, wounded with a bullet.
Walter Millis, and old isolationist, declared war on the German Reich personally in the World-Telegram, Col Lindbergh advised us against any further gesturing with an empty gun.
Set in an another bleak, all-too-imaginable near future, Nicky Singer's The Survival Game (Hodder) follows 14-year-old Mhairi as she returns to her birthplace on the Isle of Arran, with an empty gun, her identity papers and a mute five-year-old in tow.
The new model has a landscape screen that "slides" up so I can put the device on the table and rock out with my sad-eyed friends to some video of us guys sitting around playing Russian Roulette with an empty gun at my last house party.
Police later found traces of bullets and an empty gun case inside the apartment.
I came across a drainage pipe and threw the empty gun into it.
A document by the FBI that lists items seized during a search of the assailants' Redlands home included an "empty long gun box, black, in name of Enrique Marquez".
Among the incriminating evidence found in the Kimeses' possession was this: Irene's keys and passport, cassettes of her telephone conversations (taken from wiretaps), a forged deed of Irene's townhouse, loaded.9 mm and.22 caliber pistols, plastic handcuffs, an empty stun gun box, and several wigs and masks.
Honoring his memory, Ms. Hoffman, a student at Suffolk Community College, leaned against the now empty gun mount and shot photographs, not bullets.
Three empty gun clips were found at the scene, police said.
