Movie About an Accidental Killing Has an Accidental Killing

There are problems all around this mess. One is that Baldwin denies pulling the trigger and as weird as that seems I've seen at least one expert say that it could have happened the way he described it. I don't have any expertise on firearms, so I'll leave that as an exercise for the class. There's also a larger issue: the sensible idea of having multiple safety checks also confuses things. Everyone in that chain can claim the others fucked up. The responsibility is spread thin enough that prosecutors may not be able to make the charges stick on any or all of them. (I've only been on one set where any "firearms" were involved...actually authentic looking paintball guns...but the director's instructions were that anyone pointing one of them at anyone would be immediately booted.) It's really hard to believe such an accident could happen, but it's also hard to see how justice can be served.

The only person who should be up on charges is the armorer. It's certainly not the actor's role to verify that the gun has blanks vs live rounds. Indeed, live rounds shouldn't even be on set, and ESPECIALLY not in a prop gun!

It's a grotesque miscarriage of justice that Baldwin was charged. I can't believe he'll be found guilty, but he shouldn't even have to worry about it.

Baldwin is also listed as an "Executive Producer", which usually means he's the money man behind the picture. The DA claims that makes him responsible. I have my doubts, but that's the claim.

Is this a joke? Are you trying to be funny?

Then all the EP's need to be charged. It's a ridiculous case.

What nonsense are you on about now?

We've seen what makes you laugh.
Safe to say Demiurge doesn't do that material.

Anyone hands you a real firearm, even a so-called professional, you still have an obligation (legal or otherwise) to check it yourself. Period. Full stop. No debate.

It is therefore proper that Baldwin was charged, although it's unlikely he'll serve any prison time and/or be convicted.

This is what American gun culture has wrought. Hopefully real firearms are finally banned from studio sets.

And the actor is supposed to know that it is a fully functioning firearm how exactly? And be able to tell the difference between a blank and a regular cartridge?

Not everyone has the necessary skills to do what you are saying.

Which is why they hire a fucking Armorer, who does, and has legal culpability for it because of that expertise.

Baldwin didn't do anything unusual or unsafe with the gun. He did what the director asked him to. By definition it is supposed to be safe. Someone's job is to make that safe.

There are literally thousands of examples of this every year in the US. Gun porn is ubiquitous on screen.

Hell, for all we know someone put the live round in there on purpose because it was a guy who used to lampoon Trump. In which case that person isn't guilty of negligient homicide or manslaughter, but murder 1.

Then they shouldn't be handling any type of firearm, real or otherwise. Period. Full stop. No debate.

The armourer absolutely has some culpability. No one is saying otherwise.

Anyone hands you a real firearm, even a so-called professional, you still have an obligation (legal or otherwise) to check it yourself. Period. Full stop. No debate.

For fucks' sakes, this is about as obvious as it can be.

You clearly know nothing about handling firearms, or are being purposely obtuse.

Every gun expert I’ve ever dealt with has used the same mantra: “EVERY gun is loaded”

Then bring that up to the armorer - who is responsible for this. Period. Full stop. No debate. Fuck off.

Not some, all. It's literally why she's paid to be on set.

No, obtuse guy, I know that not everyone DOES have the knowledge to safely handle firearms. Unless you are mandating a NRA safety class for every actor who ever MIGHT hold a real gun, then it's a ridiculous standard.

Live rounds shouldn't be on a movie set. Actors shouldn't be expected to know the difference between a gun with a firing pin and one without.

There is absolutely no reasonable expectation that someone whose job it is to make believe should be proficient in real firearms.

It's ludicrous.

What's more, in this case the armorer knew that there were live discharges in the days BEFORE the accident. She clearly did not do her job.

You can also look at the prop company that supplied the blank rounds - or not blank, as the case may be.

It's not Baldwin's job to do this, and it's very likely he doesn't have the knowledge to do so effectively anyway.

I think that's a perfectly reasonable standard for a responsible gun user, but the sticking point here is that actors generally wouldn't fall into the category of responsible gun users. They're just pretty people playing make believe, and as part of that they should be able to trust that the prop people are doing their jobs properly because it's not entirely reasonable for them to know everything about every prop they're going to encounter while filming. If an actress is supposed to drink "poison" while playing Juliet, does she need to independently test the substance she's going to be drinking? If an actor is filming a scene where they're using drugs, should it be in them to make sure they're not about to snort actual cocaine or inject real meth into their bodies with an actual needle? If an actor is supposed to participate in a sword fight on stage do they need to double check to see if the sword they've been handed is actually razor sharp and a deadly weapon?

If the government wants to make that sort of gun safety training mandatory for actors before they can handle firearms, I'd totally support that. But as it stands right now, as an actor Baldwin shouldn't be held criminally liable for trusting the armourer to have done her job properly while rehearsing a scene in good faith.

There's certainly an argument to be made that he failed as a producer, but that they're singling him out and not charging every producer says something too.

If an actor is going to drive a car on set, it's reasonable to mandate they've passed a driving test.

If they're handling a gun, they should have completed a firearms safety course.

Read @matthunter's post and then please go fuck yourself.

kthanks bye

Which wouldn't have stopped this, unless the actor was instructed on how to visually spot a blank vs live round. Which is not currently part of any NRA training courses.

It took a complete breakdown by both the arms supplier and the armorer for this to have occurred.

Yeah, I did. He's wrong. Like you.

Go sit in the corner and think about your wrongness.

Eh, they make movies and shows where little kids steal and drive cars, we know those kids don't have licenses. Maybe they get lessons on set or maybe it's green screened, but either way it's not "real" and we know it's not real.

Tom Cruise probably does know how to fly a fighter jet because he's just that sort of committed/insane, but I'd assume most actors playing fighter pilots do not.

The only thing I'm thinking about is why I bothered to engage someone who knows exactly jack and shit about firearms in any kind of discussion.

The level of obtuseness on display by folks like yourself and @14thDoctor is pretty staggering, since both of you generally seem intelligent.

I've taken NRA training classes. I understand what they say. What I don't understand is why you think that everyone has, or don't understand that there's no legal standard to expect them to.

Evidently what happened on this set is a very inexperienced armorer who KNEW FOR SURE there were live rounds in a batch of blanks that were given to her did nothing to address that, her primary job responsibility. There had been previous live discharges, she had acknowledged this, and more live rounds were found on set by the FBI.

An actor was handed a firearm and was specifically told it was a 'cold gun' ie safe. Once again, why do you think Alec Baldwin should be able to identify the difference between a live round and a blank?

This armorer is in deep shit. She's on record saying she thought about not taking her previous job because, and I quote her, 'I'm not sure I am ready for it.' She said this before the job on a podcast. She was 24 years old when she accepted the role.

She then went on to say, and again, this has been recorded, "I think loading blanks was the scariest thing to me because I was like, oh, I don't know anything about it."

That's the thing, you're speaking as someone with fairly extensive firearms knowledge, and you're judging someone who likely knows fuck all about firearms by the standards you set for yourself. That's not really fair. That the average person isn't a firearms expert is the reason positions like armourer exist in the first place.

A friend of mine recently had to get a prescription for his daughter. The pharmacist gave him the wrong dosage, ten times what she was supposed to receive. The only thing that saved her was the fact that his wife is a nurse and happened to know the correct dosage, and saw something was wrong before the daughter received anything. If his wife hasn't been there and he'd given his daughter the incorrect dose instead, would that have been on him, or the shit-ass pharmacist?

I'm still trying to figure out why live rounds are allowed on movie sets. It's not like the audience will know the difference when watching a character discharge a firearm on screen. If it doesn't look or sound real enough in dailies just add sound and visual effects in post production. After the tragedy that happened during the making of the Twilight Zone movie, it's surprising that movie sets are still this dangerous all these years later. And that falls on producers and directors as well as the person that was in charge of the weapons.

..and The Crow. Don't forget The Crow.

What if the actor is told it's one of those stationary car sets with a video of a street projected behind it, and then the car suddenly takes off and hits someone? That's a more appropriate analogy to what happened here.

Baldwin was not wrong to trust whoever was in charge of the gun, and I don't think charging him with involuntary manslaughter is appropriate. But as a producer, he (and the other producers) do share responsibility for what happened. Just not individual criminal liability.

As someone who has dealt with both famous and high-powered folks over the years, one of the first things that you learn in dealing with such people is that you learn how to shape your interactions with such people. Back in '01, I was tech support for a satellite phone company. Some of the phones were wildly complicated in what you needed to do to make a call. Others of them weren't any harder to use than your bog standard cellphone of the era. I would get calls from folks who were the executive assistants for company executives or celebrities and they wanted to find a satphone that was as close to using an ordinary cellphone as you could get. We had those, and we would sell or rent them to such people. I would still get calls from the execs or celebs on how to use the damn thing. They were tripped up by things like removing the phone from the leather holster, which you had to do before you made a call.

So, yeah, maybe they were the greatest ever at what their career was, but ordinary shit like needing to take the phone out of the holster before you made a call? Not something that they could grasp. Now, imagine handing them a gun. As Jon-Eric Huxom would be more than happy to remind you if he was still alive, it doesn't matter if it's loaded with blanks or not, the odds of something bad happening are disturbingly high.

Given that the armorer was "young," I can handwave away her not understanding this, but other people involved with the film? Nope. She might not have grasped the idea but other people would have, and those folks should have done something.

Why are there even real guns on the set today when you could easily use a prop that is designed to fire prop blanks that cannot fire real bullets?

Who hired her in the first place? Just because she's young doesn't mean she wasn't qualified, but everything I've read about that set tells me that there was shit going on that absolutely should not have been happening. I'm all for diplomacy and tact, but when it comes to gun safety I'd want someone who can be a real hard-ass about who handles guns and how they're secured and such.

Alec Baldwin Didn’t Have to Talk to the Police. Neither Do You.

A Hollywood Armorer on the Rust Shooting Charges
Who’s responsible for the on-set shooting, and how can the movie industry prevent the next one?

60 minutes Australia did a really good piece on this. Warning.....body cam footage from the crime scene is shown and it is disturbing. Clear case of cutting corners and an armorer who had no business doing what she was doing. The gun was not loaded in front of everyone as is the usual protocol. A professional armorer shows 60 minutes how you can tell the difference between live and dummy round and this bimbo seemed clueless.