That video is reminder that it doesn’t matter if TMZ usually gets their facts straight. They’re bottom-feeding scum, using the first amendment as a tool of harassment.
My thinking was that the photo – pretty inarguable in terms of what happened in that case – really amplified my basic point: that Baldwin was extremely composed considering all that he must be going through.
And the pic saved people from following a link – something many aren’t constitutionally that keen on doing.
All that said … I don’t feel strongly about the photo remaining. If you do, just let me know and I’ll gladly ask the kindly mods to delete it from the post.
Somewhat grace, but probably also tempered by grief and guilt (whether that guilt is deserved or not).
All 3 of these things cannot be true:
- The guns were always secured and accounted for
- The armorer did her job of controlling weapons at all time
- A ball round was fired into someone’s body
Somewhere or somehow she didn’t satisfy the basic requirement of her job (keeping people from getting hurt). Why?
This is what really tears it for me. If your main job is to protect human life, then you don’t take an additional duty that could distract from it. You just don’t do that! Was she desperately behind on rent/groceries, or was she just trying to avoid losing a plum credit on her resumé?
I have my suspicions, but it would be irresponsible to share them based on such little hard information.
Did he say the police ordered him? I kind of got the impression that his attorney ordered him not to, but then again I’m involved in that other thread.
He literally says “I’ve been ordered by the Sheriff’s Department in Santa Fe…”
I’ll cut him slack, though. I’m guessing he was asked politely by the cops to not comment until the investigation is complete.
I suspect that she was experienced enough to have sufficient credentials to get such a job, but too INexperienced to know what a shitty situation she was getting into. More experienced armorers turned down the job, a few of them have gone on record that they turned it down because their attention would be too divided to do a proper job. Nor was she experienced enough (or wise enough - take your pick) to join the walk off with other people leaving because of safety concerns.
Of course, speculation on my part subject to change with more information.
He also said he’d been told that by “multiple people”. I expect he has - some from the Santa Fe sheriff’s office, his own lawyer(s), possible others.
Physicians get paid by insurance companies for evaluation and management visits depending on time spent with the patient (CPT E/M codes). You can spend more time than the level of visit you submit, but not less. Procedures have different CPT codes with their own payments.
There is no need for any kind of stick. Cleaning guns requires a rod that pushes a cleaning patch thru the entire barrel. One would hope that someone that says they are a professional armorer would have the appropriate equipment.
Absolutely. Everything she did on that set should have been secondary to making sure that no live rounds ever ended up in those guns. If they end up charging only one person, it’s going to be her.
I also wonder why, if it was a dress rehearsal, that the gun would be loaded with anything. They weren’t filming, they were just setting up camera angles. No reason for dummy rounds or blanks. That could come later when they were actually filming.
I’d also like to hear a bit more on what their covid rules were on set. Early on it was reported that covid rules were why the armorer was away from the cart that had the guns and why she wasn’t on set. I’d be curious if they had unvaccinated people on set and tried to work around them with some poorly thought out rules. That wouldn’t excuse her ineptitude at her job, but I am curious. I haven’t seen anything about covid rules in later reports.
They would start filming the moment they had everything set up right. Baldwin was demonstrating where his hand would end up when he drew the revolver, so that they could focus the camera on it.
For my almost 30 years in the Army every time I went to the range the instructions were always the same. Enter and exit the firing line at the base of the tower where you will be rodded on and off the range.
On a properly run set, the weapon is cold until it’s time to roll camera on the shot. Rehearsal is never (or should never) be done with a hot weapon. When rehearsal is complete and all actor and camera blocking is set, there is a pause while the weapon is made hot. Everything waits. Then the camera rolls and the weapon is discharged for the shot. Then, on cut, the weapon is secured.
If there’s interest, I could relate the sequence of actions during a film shoot where a weapon was discharged in front of me. The short version is, we filmed around the gunshot with a constantly cold weapon, and loaded it only when it needed to be fired in front of the camera.
I still don’t see why he needed a loaded gun. Once they framed the shot, load the gun then film the scene. Baldwin doesn’t have to move at all. Of course, all this is just details. If the armorer had done her job none of us would have ever heard of this movie.
From other reading, I gather shots with a gun firing directly into a camera, either a plexiglass shield or an unmanned camera are used. Or both. The plexiglass is only to protect from wadding from a blank, not a live round.
Or, just what @Cervaise said. 
Cervaise, please tell us about your experience. It would be useful to compare to the Bill_Door story and the Rust shooting.
Exactly. It should be the same routine every time until it’s almost a reflex and feels strange when you deviate from the routine.
It was supposed to be a cold weapon. That’s the whole point. The AD handed it to Baldwin saying, ‘Cold gun’.
It was supposed to have only dummy rounds in it. There wasn’t going to be any firing of blanks.
It needed to be loaded with dummies so that it would look right when pointed at the camera. Otherwise you would see empty chambers. There would be no firing.
We’ve been through all this several times already in this thread.
The rounds used in the gun pointed at me were some kind of training round that had no projectile. Nothing comes out of the barrel except gases. I don’t know what they were called, but I’ve seen some non-marking training rounds that have a hold off distance of one foot. I was somewhere around five feet away. The armorer showed me the magazine, the open breech, and down the barrel and I was unconcerned.
There’s a whole hierarchy of control, starting with elimination and ending in personal protective equipment (PPE). Elimination, substitution, engineering, administrative, and PPE. Look, every time people go hunting they depend on only the last two, administrative controls, which is depending on other hunters not to shoot you, and PPE, which is wearing Blaze Orange. A lot of people are injured every year by hunters, around a thousand.
Movie sets use elimination, substitution and engineering as well as administrative and PPE. A lot of the things used aren’t actually guns, and a lot of the guns have things that aren’t ammunition and are designed to not accept ammunition. Very few of the cast and crew injured on set. I can find only four in the last forty years. Yes it’s a problem, but on sets with competent armorers it’s not a big safety issue.
They didn’t care about that on this film. The AD himself said that he thought there were 3 or 4 rounds in the gun that holds six. I don’t think they were trying real hard for realism on this set.
This is exactly how Brandon Lee was killed. And how Jon Erik Hexum killed himself. Blanks are not safe at close range.
Did your armorer explain why he needed to have blanks in the gun? You said no one actually fired the gun in your scene, right? And no one in the audience can see if there are rounds in the magazine. So what are they there for? The best answer I can come up with is as a time saving measure and that’s a rotten excuse to skip safety protocols.
Not a blank. Did you see me type blank? A training round. Did you see me type that I saw down the barrel as I was shown by the armorer? I’m starting to grow weary of these exchanges with you.
This only works with semiautos doesn’t it? When the rod taps, it disengages the bolt catch and the buffer spring slams the bolt forward. Can’t do that with a revolver.
I mean I guess it’s possible to detect an obstruction by rodding a revolver, but you have to pay attention and feel it, you don’t get that big obvious indication of the bolt slamming shut.
Frankly, the most disturbing thing I see in that paragraph was that the AD was not certain how many objects were in the gun.
Based on my research (meaning, I’m still no expert but I’ve been trying to educate myself) it was customary to put only 5 bullets into that gun despite having room for six, and this was done as a safety measure. That way, the hammer rested on an empty chamber and the gun would not fire accidentally if the hammer was hit, the gun dropped, etc. If the scene was supposed to be during/after a gun fight have less than the full complement of rounds would also make sense/be “authentic”/whatever.
Of course, there never should have been live rounds anywhere near that gun.