Acting irresponsibly while handling firearms does not indicate guilt or even suggest that he is guilty of involuntary manslaughter? On what planet does that hold true?
The comment I was responding to only mentioned he was “acting irresponsibly” I don’t think it said specifically that he was being irresponsible with firearms, and it was either that post or another that seemed to imply that Baldwin was “irresponsible” because he cussed out his daughter once.
and we’re not going to really go through all that nonsense again about if actors don’t follow, i.e the USMC’s or FBI’s weapons safety protocols that they are irresponsible when it simply doesn’t apply? They are not of course because they are not using the firearms as weapons but only as props. Do you really want to open up all that unrelated firearm safety nonsense again?
Didn’t we finally rid this thread of that canard? I think it was eliminated for a few weeks but now it’s sneaking in again.
It’s a brave new world thread.
Which reminds me of another reason a jury trial for this seems like a particularly bad idea. Even here on the dope we have people constantly beating that drum of “you never point a gun at anybody,” outright refusing to acknowledge the reality that things are different on a movie set. What are the odds that the purple State of Arizona will have at least a couple chuckleheads of similar mind on the jury?
I guess based on their perspective every James Bond should go to jail for pointing the gun at the camera in the opening title sequence.
In any case, I view this as a partisan prosecution that’s just hoping they get partisan jurors. And worst case scenario from their point of view, at least they cause Alec Baldwin to spend a ton of money and endure the stress of criminal trial. It truly boggles my mind.
EDIT: I mean, send the armorer to jail, 100%. Also lock up David Halls, the ad who handed him the gun and said it was cold. But of course they can’t do that because they gave him a sweetheart deal within a week of the shooting. But the actor? Seriously? Hey, Baldwin’s a dick and a liberal. Let’s get him!
And other lawmakers who have protected the (harmless but useless) snake oil that is homeopathy.
Yes. that is true, in general you should not point a gun at someone. Or punch them repeatedly. Or stab them with a sword, or drive 200 mph, or throw someone thru a plate glass window, or jump off a tall building, etc etc - but all these things are normal and expected in film, stage and sports.
But the FDA was created by lawmakers.
They also created OSHA, which said that Alec Baldwin was not at fault.
I’m saying listen to OSHA, not a random group of laymen on a jury. Of course the DA specifically said that OSHA’s findings were irrelevant because they don’t make the law. So here we are.
And again, as already mentioned, lawmakers have decided to throw out FDA findings that they don’t like. It’s all bad. Let the experts have the power, not the judiciary.
DA’s don’t make the law either, I propose we consider their opinions irrelevant as well.
That’s not what OSHA did. They weren’t looking to assign individual blame. This was a state agency, NM OSHA, not the feds. NM OSHA did issue a citation.
And based on what I understand is known that is likely correct.
There were previous incidents that should have triggered a review and investigation of the safety protocols.
That was a significant system failure. The reasons for that failure should be investigated and the industry as a whole may be able to learn from it.
It certainly does not seem like the cultural value on the set was a safety priority. But blaming the person who happened to be holding the gun for that production wide failure is not helpful.
An investigation that results in industry wide process improvements is looking more at system factors, not exclusively at a person or persons to hold liable and to blame. Juries are poor tools to accomplish that.
Yes it is. Specifically, they concluded that Baldwin was not part of the management team.
Industries preempt government regulation only in a very weak sense. Not like, say, the federal government preempting state law. More like a kid sweeping dust under the rug so mom will think he did a good job sweeping up the floor. Look under the rug and you might not like what you see.
Yes, lawmakers make boneheaded—even malicious—decisions. Yes, it is good to have experts weigh in on regulations.
But anything government is capable of doing wrong, industry is capable of doing worse and with even less accountability. And industry experts left to their own devices, absent appropriate government oversight (or where government yields too much to an industry’s own judgment), have given us things like…. the 737 MAX. The Ford Pinto. And, on the subject of healthcare, Hobby Lobby (referencing its employee health plan) and our truly… exceptional health insurance industry in the US.
The solution to bad government isn’t less government (as the libertarians will insist is the proper course of action), it’s better government that passes laws for the public good, not for private interests (which, again, if you cut out the government, it just makes it easier for private interests to oppress the public, not harder: what the libertarians always seem to forget—or maybe just hope the rest of us won’t notice—is that money is a power all of its own, but more so without the government to intervene on the public’s behalf).
So the FDA, medical boards and OSHA are worthless. We should disband all those and just use jury trials for everything. Much better to have laypeople than experts deciding technical issues, right?
Here you defend government with the legislative branch creating law, the executive branch executing it (such as by way of agencies made up of experts), and decisions about what is or is not within the range of proper execution of the law as written by the judicial branch. @EllisDee’s examples apply here.
Often very appropriate, agreed that industries require appropriate oversight, and not at stake in a jury trial regarding an individual accused of negligence. A jury of lay people, after hearing evidence offered within an adversarial system , deciding whether industry practices are adequate is very much not the same thing, in fact it circumvents that rational deliberative process.
So I have kinda the opposite opinion of this case. The way that NM manslaughter law is phrased it makes it very easy to prosecute the poor chump who physically caused the accident and not the higher ups who are far more culpable in most cases (as they allowed the unsafe circumstances, and were making a bunch of cash from those circumstances). The fact in this case the poor chump is a very rich powerful Hollywood actor (and also as producer, one of those higher ups too), is irrelevant. In most cases (that don’t make the front pages) this would be a lowly worker who screwed up and made some minor mistake that lead to someone’s death, who’s being prosecuted while the owners who set up thier workplace so that a minor mistake could kill someone gets off scot free.
Isn’t it? I mean, it’s kind of the same idea. You seem to think industry standards should be dispositive. I think they should only be evidence of what a reasonable person would do.
And FWIW, I think that ought to cut both ways: just because an industry or an employer says “the standard is X” doesn’t mean that adhering to the standard must necessarily excuse an actor of negligence. But, conversely, just because an actor fails to adhere to a nominal standard put forward by industry or an employer does not mean they are necessarily guilty of negligence.
My point remains the same: industry does not have (or a least should not have) the final say in law. That is not (or at least didn’t used to be) what our democracy (our “representative democracy” if you must) was built on.
I honestly don’t see how you can get that from what I wrote, except maybe by not actually reading what I wrote.
Not even on the same planet of the same idea.
Dunno. However, although the reliably blue State of New Mexico, where the incident took place, is also not short of a few chuckleheads, it’s also not a place where you’ll find a lot of far-right DAs who are out to nail liberal celebrities. If anything, the fear is that the state is inclined to cater too much to the film industry.
Seriously, we’re right here between Texas and Arizona.
Doh!
Not sure why I thought it was in Arizona.
You’re the place with blue meth, right? And the great fried chicken?
Yes! And the hospital that saved Bob Odenkirk’s life after his heart attack! We love limousine liberals - this is where they buy their adobe getaways in former art colonies.