shoot blanks

"But it turned out that the President was only shooting blanks."

You know, it's harder to shoot blanks than real bullets.

It is painful to see such an expert reduced to shooting blanks.

"Chris Morris made some good moves, but the guards shot blanks."

I sigh like a man before a firing squad that's just shot blanks.

"Roger that, but if these guys are out to get us, I don't want to be shooting blanks."

But in the end, the Redskins, too, shot blanks.

There's a few approaches and he keeps shooting blanks.

Considering that he was shooting blanks, I'd have felt like kind of a prick."

Phil says there's no way he's shooting blanks, since Justine is expecting.

That all sounded well and good, but why not have the actors shoot blanks as well?

That was probably because the ambushers and the convoy guards were shooting blanks.

Sometimes they are shooting blanks by the time they arrive in George's corral.

As the doctor tells the shocked Nick, "You're shooting blanks 85 percent of the time."

Jill tells him that he's "shooting blanks" in the paternity sweepstakes.

You don't put in half the punch when you shoot blanks; I've noticed that all along.

Case like this, you might be able to squeak out a decent deal before the guy realizes you're shooting blanks."

According to this account, the soldiers in the firing squad put blood packets over his heart and then shot blanks at the Marshal.

Although the battling tall ships use actual black powder, they shoot blanks, not cannonballs.

If Dr. Dean really does have critics on this score, they're shooting blanks.

He said he was confident that the five players who shot blanks in the first three games would rebound in Game 4.

"I'm telling you that you aren't shooting blanks and haven't been for quite awhile now," he said.

They thought it was an end-of-term joke, and that the aggressor was shooting blanks.