I’m not sure you understand what a harness does.
I’m not sure you understand the question.
Then rephrase it.
Edit, don’t bother, you moved the goal posts by adding the word “your”.
What?
I’m done. You can play that game with someone else.
Tell me how your harness is a potential danger to others in the same way a gun is and requires the same level of care for the person using it to avoid harming others.
You are trying to equate two things that are not the same at all.
Your post made sense until you tried yet again to sneak in Cooper Safety Rules. No, they do not apply on a movie set. As an actor, it is sometimes part of the job to point a gun at someone, or to have a gun pointed at you. It is absolutely not one of the “layers” of protection that safety should depend in any way on an actor not pointing a gun at someone, or an actor not accidentally pulling the trigger. If that were one of the safety layers, the safety system would be grossly unfit for purpose.
There may be situations where a gun is loaded with blanks when safety protocols on a movie set might dictate strict handling procedures where you don’t point a gun at someone because blanks are dangerous. But those are movie-specific blank-specific safety protocols, not the general Cooper Rules. And not applicable to a situation where a gun is supposed to be completely inert and the purpose of the scene is to point the gun, as here.
Yes, potentially. But also why did you just pick that one? Are you claiming for example that actors need to be trained in telling real and fake glass apart and also perform inspections prior to every scene?
A gun is a weapon. Its proper operation can be lethal to others (indeed, that is its purpose). As such, those using them should be trained in their safe use.
Is that the same for a harness or fake glass?
That’s fair. It IS sometimes necessary to treat a gun on set in a way you never would in other circumstances, such as pointing it at someone, holding a gun to someone’s head, etc.
Still, the rules say to only do this when absolutely necessary, and to maintain normal gun safety prodedures at all other times. The question will come down to whether Baldwin was being unusually reckless with the gun.
But again, that wouldn’t have mattered had any of the other safety procedures been followed properly. They weren’t.
What I was saying in my last post was that there is a LOT of blame to go around here. IMO, with the info I have seen, Baldin is LEAST to blame. The others were the pros whose primary job was to keep the set safe. Baldwin was an actor who was secondary in the safety chain. As an actor, he does not bear primary responsibility for this, IMO.
As a producer, on the other hand… They hired an unqualified armorer on the cheap. There were already numerous safety and protocol violations on set that went unaddressed. Covid rules were put in place that impacted safety. According to reports, at least one accidental discharge had previously happened on that set, and nothing was done about it. He may have some liability there.
OSHA determined that he did not.
While there certainly is a crime of negligent homicide, negligence is usually handled through civil suits. In many jurisdictions punitive damages are also available for “reckless disregard for the safety of others.”
To my mind, what happened on this set was negligence of varying degrees by a series of people. While some may have technically committed a crime, this case is textbook example of negligence that should be resolved in the civil justice system. I see cases every week where someone died because of someone else’s negligence. Many are more egregious than what Baldwin did here. It’s not a simple as “someone died, the person at fault should be prosecuted.”
And for what it’s worth:
Your harness could be incorrectly attached and drop you on to someone.
Your harness could be retracted (as in, to make it look like an explosion knocked you back) incorrectly and cause you to hit someone.
Your harness could get tangled up on another actor and pull them down with you (and possibly drown them).
Again, for the umpteenth time, no.
If “normal gun safety procedures” means a clueless rugged individual who is exercising their ill-conceived Second Amendment rights taking responsibility for making sure that the weapon they are wielding doesn’t accidently kill someone, then “normal gun safety procedures” certainly do NOT apply on a movie set. Movie sets have meaningful and rigorous standards. The amateur who is wielding the gun should be following the strict safety protocols laid out by safety professionals, not following what they personally imagine to be “normal” safety procedures.
How many movies and TV shows has Baldwin been on in his lifetime do you think?
How many times do you think the professional armorers never bothered to explain basic gun safety on all those sets?
I agree with that. And the only truly ‘reckless’ behavior would yave been the armorer’s. Allowing live ammunition to be loaded into a gun on set is pretty unconscionable. And she didn’t do any of the steps that would have prevented it or caught the mistake before the gun went on set.
I’m guessing a thousand actors have used their set guns exactly as Baldwin did with nothing bad happening. Yes, he should have asked to see that the gun was safe, but even failing to do that is understandable in this case, because it wasn’t the armorer handing him the gun, and the assistant producer could not be expected to knowmhowmto demonstrate that the gun was safe.
If I were apportioning blame here, 70% would go the armorer, 20% to the assistant director, and 10% to Baldwin, IF he was treating the gun more casually than he should have. That could change if it can be shown that in his role as producer he took steps that lowered safety.
However, details really matter, and I’m not sure we have a good handle on what really happened. The reporting on this, as usual, has been godawful.
Nobody is disputing that Baldwin may be negligent if he proceeded to film the scene while knowing that normal movie set safety protocols were not being followed. That’s not what the issue is. The issue is the ignorant nonsense that keeps being regurgitated that an actor following the generalized Cooper Rules has any part in that.
You might imagine that an individual taking personal initiative to follow the general Cooper Rules as well adds another layer of safety. You would be wrong. If someone is working under the assumption that their personal discretion to generally “try not to point a gun at someone” or “be careful not to pull the trigger” is making things adequately safe, that will make them tend to be less diligent about rigorously following the strict protocols laid out by safety professionals that will always make the weapon safe to handle on a movie set, regardless of whether someone accidentally pulls the trigger.
He is not.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/23/entertainment/hannah-gutierrez-reed-tampering-change/index.html
Hannah Gutierrez Reed was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter back in January of last year (the same time that Baldwin was, except they never dropped the charges against her like they did against him), and then in June they added a “tampering with evidence” charge.
A more recent article with newer developments:
David Halls, the first assistant director who handed the gun to Baldwin, pleaded no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon and was sentenced to six months probation for his part.
Then i see no problem with charging Baldwin, as well at the others. He seems to have some responsibility. At least, there’s a high enough chance that he is substantially liable that a trial seems appropriate.
It does sound like there was a general problem with workplace safety on the set, as well.
The published evidence suggests that the AD who was quickly let off with a soft plea bargain is more culpable than Baldwin; and the question of whether Baldwin accidentally pulled the trigger seems irrelevant. So to me the DA (or whoever in the DA’s office is now prosecuting this) has very little credibility in either following the law or understanding how movie set safety is supposed to work.