Maybe.
He was fucking around on set with a gun. He pulled the trigger. He killed someone.
It was an awful accident and I agree with @Sam_Stone that he does not deserve to go to prison. I think the armorer has the most fault here.
But it remains that Baldwin was fucking around and pulled the trigger. I find it hard to think he has no fault.
More deteriorating arguments.
Yeah. And those rules say that an actor must be physically shown that the gun is ‘safe’ before accepting it. I have posted both the SAG and ACTRA rules before, I believe in this thread.
Multiple layers of safety are used when dealing with guns. Each person in the chain is responsible for ensuring that the gun is safe before passing it on. The armorer shakes the bullets to make sure dummies are dummies, checks for the hole in the side of the cartridges, and makes sure the barrel is clear. The armorer then takes the gun to the actor, and says ‘safe gun’. The armoer then opens the action and demonstrates to the actor that the gun is safe. Even if the actor can’t tell, forcing this step gives the armorer a last-second check for the gun’s safety. Those are the established procedures.
When an actor accepts the gun, they are supposed to treat it like a live firearm whenever possible. So no casual pointing it at people, no working the action and pulling the trigger for fun, no putting your finger inside the trigger guard until you have to for a scene, etc. Even when ‘shooting’ someone or pointing a gun at them, the scenes are typically shot so that you can’t tell that the actors are actually aiming maybe 10-20 degrees off target. Especially when blanks are involved. A blank round can do a lot of damage. At short distance a blank can blow a hole through 1/4" plywood - or a skull.
On occasions where you need a POV shot or an over-the shoulder shot of someone shooting at someone else, maybe you can’t do that. But I read that even when the actor is pointing the gun at the camera, the camera operators are not supposed to stand behind the camera at that moment, but are to move off to teh side a bit. I don’t know if that’s true, though. Just a comment I read from a supposed pro on another forum.
I have heard that Baldwin was practicing a ‘cross draw’, where the gun is in a holster with the handle facing outward, and you reach across your body with your opposite hand, grab the gun, and bring it to bear. This is a really dangerous way to use a gun, because the act of bringing it to target causes the muzzle to sweep across a lot of stuff you don’t want to shoot. So my guess is that Baldwin was going to do a fast draw and ‘fan’ the hammer, and when he pulled the gun out he already had the trigger pulled, and when he fanned the hammer the gun went off.
Sure, but the distinction between the actor being responsible for gun safety and the actor being responsible for following the movie set protocols established by professional safety experts is not just a nitpick when people are suggesting that Cooper’s Rules govern this, and suggesting that the problem here is that Baldwin did not follow Cooper’s Rules.
I believe the situation here was that the gun was supposed to be loaded with real-looking but inert rounds. In other words, it’s supposed to look loaded. What’s the standard procedure at handover in this situation?
It seems to me that they probably have a way to go after Baldwin because someone with his experience should have seen that protocols were not being followed correctly and refused to proceed. But the part that makes no sense is that really nothing hinges on whether he pulled the trigger. It was a situation where an accidental trigger pull was an obvious risk, so no element of safety should have depended on the actor not pulling the trigger. The gun should have been inert.
No he was not. He was rehearsing a scene.
I believe this indictment will have a chilling effect on film sets.
It must be very scary for actors to realize they could be held responsible for a horrific accident. This was so clearly a massive failure of production and Union safety protocols.
Where does this stop? Say an actor pushes someone off a building in a scene. The safety harness breaks. Is the actor criminally responsible?
There’s not much difference in a defective harness and a defective gun. Production staff are supposed to examine equipment carefully for any defects like a loaded bullet in a prop gun or torn material in a harness.
Harrison Ford broke his leg in the last Star Wars film when a heavy prop spaceship door fell on him. Something that should have been checked before the actor got on set.
I’m confident Baldwin will win this case. But the emotional toll and expense defending himself will be high.
Right. Therefore, Nobody would be ever dare risk a real weapon on a movie set capable of firing real live ammunition. They would use simulators, propane for flames, reproduction weapons incapable by design and intention, to preclude the firing of a projectile. Even a blank gun, or starter pistol can be deadly in certain circumstances.
Yeah, he’s the real victim here if you think about it. It the gun was defective, you might have a point. Well not really. What page of the script shows where the director gets plugged? The gun worked “fine”, no?
They do need a 2nd person to check weapons and sign off they’re correctly loaded for a scene.
The AD already takes possession of these guns after the Armorer prepares them.
It wouldn’t be hard to train AD’s to inspect guns. They would be warned that signing a form that the gun is properly prepared makes them potentially liable.
That makes more sense than training hundreds of actors to inspect the guns handed to them on set.
But that’s to prevent future accidents on set. Halyna Hutchins can never be forgotten. What happened to her is horrible.
Back the truck up first.
Where does it state that local, state, and federal firearms law can be disregarded, so long as as a movie is being made? I mean, I suppose as a practical matter, sure.
Perhaps you could back the truck up to your last 3 posts and explain what point you’re making, because it’s far from obvious.
What laws do you think were broken here, and by whom?
Fwiw California has an Entertainment Firearms Permit, but I don’t think that relates to safety protocols. I can’t find anything similar in NM. Everything I’ve seen in relation to this incident says that safety protocols have been established within the industry by studios and unions, not by any kind of federal or state regulation.
No, but I’m hardly surprised that the standard safety protocols require the actor to be shown that the gun is safe. And it seems that he skipped that step.
I imagine the standard safety protocols for actors wearing a harness is to check the harness, and then have a professional check the harness, too. That’s been the rule when i have worn climbing harnesses, and while I’m not an expert on either gun safety or climbing safety, these protocols seem like common sense.
He’s not being charged with murder. And it seems vanishingly unlikely that he committed murder. He’s being charged with manslaughter, which is what you are charged with if you fuck up and someone is killed. And it seems that by skipping the “have the armorer show you the gun is safe” step, he fucked up.
I think there is a big difference.
A defective harness kills you, not the director. If you do not inspect the harness and you die that is very different than you do not inspect the harness and you jump at the director and the harness kills the director.
ETA: Maybe think of it like this. The actor has a scene where they have to stab someone. They are supposed to be given a spring-loaded, non-lethal knife. The amorer hands them a real knife. Can the actor then stab someone else and claim it is not their fault because the amorer said it was a fake blade?
Picture a different scene. One actor is going to push they other off the side of a building. The person falling is wearing a harness so they’ll only fall a few feet and then will be lowered the rest of the way slowly/safely. The stunt people get the harness connected and whoever is in charge of double checking it, double checks that everything is correctly attached. The actor pushes the stunt person off the side of the building and they hit the ground and die. If it turns out the harness failed because of something that all the stunt people missed, is the actor guilty of murder for not checking everything themselves and taking the experts’ word that the rig was safe?
Oddly enough, that’s surprisingly common. Though it seems like it was more often the actor’s fault for grabbing the wrong knife.
Note, I only skimmed these, so I don’t have all the details:
Unfortunately, a stunt coordinator had forgotten to switch out the props, resulting in Jane using an actual blade and stabbing Nash in the collarbone.
Instead of picking up the rubber knife, O’Quinn accidently took the real knife to stab Fox.
Smits grabbed a real knife instead of a prop during shooting.
Feel free to repeat exactly what I said, great minds think alike and all, but I’m not sure why you prefaced it with “no, but”.
As I said, that’s at least a plausible basis to charge him. But I think we need more clarity on what the usual handover procedure is for a gun that is supposed to look loaded. And why does the DA think it’s important whether he accidentally pulled the trigger?
I’m pretty sure pulling the trigger accidentally and killing someone is still a potential crime most places.
(Again, to be clear, I do not think Baldwin deserves prison for this.)
He was not “fucking around on the set with a gun”. Accounts I have read say he was practicing drawing a prop gun. An actor in a film involving the depiction of gunplay will often be called upon to simulate deadly or unsafe handling of a firearm. On a film set, “fucking around with a gun” may very well be an actor’s job. It’s a prop.
Many other props and pieces of equipment can also be deadly or injurious if safety protocols are violated as happened in this case. Electrocution, falls, blunt force trauma, etc are some examples of potential dangers on a set.
This death was the result of an industrial accident and should be treated as such. We have been through this SO many times in this thread.
What is the difference between a “prop gun” and a regular gun?
Also, if I handed you a “prop” gun on 5th and Broadway in New York City and said it was unloaded and you turned around and pointed it at someone and pulled the trigger and killed them are you completely innocent?
[Bolding mine]
But Baldwin wasn’t “using a gun” in the normal sense. It is not (necessarily) a dangerous way to handle a prop gun on a movie set where such acting is totally appropriate and expected.
Jumping off a 5 storey building is “really dangerous”. A stunt person jumping off a 5 storey building is not (necessarily) dangerous but it could be if the proper safety protocols are not followed.
Of course not. But that is a very different situation from what happened on the “Rust” set. If you believe it’s analogous then you are just repeating the same canard we’ve seen waaaaaaay too much of in this thread. It is really old and tiresome at this point. It was old and tiresome about 37,000 posts ago.