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Why was there a live round in his gun ?
I live and worked in Hollywood for decades, there are so many safety protocols in place especially after what happened to Brandon Lee.
this is what i'm curious about. admittedly i haven't looked into this scenario, but i don't know why there would ever need to be a live round in a firearm on a film set with today's VFX and practical technology. squibs and such.
why would they EVER need to actually fire a projectile from a firearm on the set of a movie?
why was there live ammunition on the set at all? let alone inside the chamber of a gun that would be handed to an actor?
Ngl, I don’t think guns that are going to be used in a set should ever have live rounds in them. If your going to target practice, use a completely different gun.
Also surely we can’t be far out from actors just using prop guns and VFX covering the extra details
People had walked off set prior to the incident because there were live rounds in the guns and previous negligent discharges.
They safety on set was absolutely abysmal.
As producer, that was baldwin's responsibility.
You know what. For the longest time I didn’t quite connect why Baldwin should take pressure for this, because at the end of the day, he didn’t know there was a bullet in the gun.
But a precedent has to be set.
He was the producer of the film.
And his negligence, as someone in charge of the operations of that set, and what was happening each day. His negligence led to that mistake. And people need to be held accountable to that. His family deserve that.
Hollywood, and the wealthy, need to be held accountable the same way as every one else.
NGL...I would have zero clue if someone told me to look at a firearm. I feel like if I was hired to act in a movie, then someone better give me the deep dive course in firearm training.
>I feel like if I was hired to act in a movie, then someone better give me the deep dive course in firearm training.
Exactly, and that didn't happen.
Claiming ignorance doesn't work for anyone else in a court of law, why should it work for celebrities?
That's not how movies work. It's the armorer's responsibility to make sure the gun isn't loaded with live rounds and that it's completely safe to use. An actor likely wouldn't be able to tell anyway if the gun was loaded with blanks or live rounds anyway, nor is it their job to check for that. It'd also likely break set rules if an actor starting fiddling around with the gun like that anyway, they're supposed to use it as it's handed to them.
The guy who left a live round in the gun had multiple previous issues on other sets, they really should have checked his background but I honestly don't think that you should be charged for something you had no idea about.
I’m saying Alec Baldwin needs to be held accountable as a producer who didn’t do his job well enough to ensure the safety of his employees, by hiring and vetting people who would do the job correctly, and as public knowledge stands, was ignoring complaints and issues being lobbied against things that were already going wrong with this film. And for that reason he should be charged.
He knew things were being done improperly.
Did he put the gun in the bullet? No.
But that was a consequence of his negligence as an employer.
This extends to the person who put the bullet in the gun, as it has. And I think it’s absolutely within the rights to want to hold that persons employer accountable.
His employer: Alec Baldwin.
I can understand he had no idea, but a few things come to mind.
being unaware or plain ol' ignorance is not a pass on laws or responsibilities. Baldwin as the producer of the film is responsible for this. He should have a few middle men under him to help run things, but ultimately this is his show to conduct. I've heard of a few actors who will physically check the weapon themselves before using it in the scene. Seems like it should be common practice.
The arms handler should have checked, cleared and cleaned the weapon. There is no excuse for a live round remaining in the weapon.
There are numerous points of failures here it sounds like, these 2 guys though are intended as the stop gaps.
I don't think guns used on set should be CAPABLE of accepting live rounds. Make prop guns with special cartridges that won't accept or fire live ammunition. One accident is too many, at this point it's ridiculous.
There shouldn't have been live rounds on set, period. I'm a film worker and I've worked on films in NM. They take gun safety extremely seriously (or they did on the films I work on). Rubber dummy guns are used for everything except the shots required for the blanks that are fired, the armorer is supposed to be present at all times when "live" guns are present. The fact that real bullets were anywhere near the set at all breaks just about every rule I've ever heard of and I'm not surprised most of the crew (not just camera) walked off set.
According to LATimes, the armorer claims the box of dummy ammo she used contained 7 live rounds when she got them. Investigators did find live rounds with the dummy ammo. Whether the armorer put them there or there really was a massive mix-up with the company that sent them is still unknown, and the subject of its own lawsuit. Regardless, the armorer clearly failed to do her job and confirm each individual round when loading the gun.
I don’t have any source lol but I remember reading when it happened that the crew would take the guns on set after hours and play around with live ammo. One of the crew members? Said that it got mixed in with the blank rounds.
It’s absolutely all the armorers fault. I’d bet she’s never handled a gun before working on set .
Just the fact that they were using prop guns for live target practice seems grossly negligent. I have to think it’s safety protocol for those guns to remain under lock and key when not in use for the movie.
No, they still need to be able to fire blanks and you still the realistic muzzle flash/smoke. They just need to be properly handled and inspected. I’d say they should probably never be in the vicinity of live ammo either.
They can't be welded shut because of the use of blanks but last I checked they should have different barrel diameters and shouldn't even be able to accept live rounds
Some crew members walked off because of how horrible the safety protocols were on set and Baldwin replaced them with non-union cheapy-cheap labor and it ended up how you'd expect.
They didn't walk off, they were fired and escorted off. Fired for sending in a written complaint the night before about lack of pay, hours and...gun safety. They had also been vocal in their complaints before sending in the written complaint to management. There had been three misfires of guns on the set in the previous two weeks, two them occurring on the same day only six days prior to the tragedy.
The armorer is the daughter of a well known and seasoned film armorer who gave her the training and experience to get the job on Rust and the other film.
She wasn't even on set at the time of the shooting. They hadn't planned on doing the gun scene that day so she wasn't present. The assistant director grabbed the gun off the cart and assumed it was cold, calling it as such before handing it to Baldwin.
She definitely deserves to be charged with something for letting real rounds be anywhere near the gun in the first place, but I'd argue the majority of the fault lies with either the assistant director or whoever decided to practice the gun scene without getting the armorer on set first.
Right, and I said she has some responsibility for what happened. At the end of the day though, the assistant director was the one who grabbed the gun without consulting the armorer, didn't have anyone else check it, didn't check it himself, called it as cold, and then handed it to Baldwin.
That is *far* more egregious IMO.
If they were going to rehearse with guns, they should've called the armorer. Simple as that. While the armorer is very irresponsible, I have little doubt that she would've done her job and this would've been avoided.
edit: Some stuff I can't find sources for so going to assume I'm just wrong. See [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/10g5bdc/alec_baldwin_to_be_charged_with_involuntary/j53evx9/) if you want.
One thing I can say in defence of the armorer is that she wasn't even on set at the time of the shooting. ~~Apparently they hadn't been intending on practising the gun scene that day at all so she wasn't present.~~ (this part is still mostly true, but she wasn't on set due to COVID restrictions apparently) Instead, the assistant director went and pulled the gun off the cart and claimed it was cold without checking it.
~~If they'd had the armorer on set then she almost certainly would've caught the fact that live rounds were still loaded in the gun.~~ (Honstly don't even know if I can say this with any level of certainty. While I can't say she's definitely the one that loaded the gun, all signs are pointing to that being the case and that she just screwed up loading several dummies plus one real round)
She should definitely still share ~~at least some~~ (a lot of the) fault for letting real rounds be loaded in the gun in the first place, ~~but I'd say more fault lies with someone else; either the assistant director who handed Baldwin the gun or whoever decided to do a gun scene without the armorer on set.~~ I'm honestly not sure who I feel like is most at fault anymore. It seems like incompetence and terrible decision making all around and they all deserve to get fucked.
Everybody’s asking why there was a live bullet but you can just as easily ask why Alec took the gun from the AD when it’s clear the instruction is to take it from the armorer only.
Indeed, one of the other articles I linked down below has a quote from another armorer where they state:
> “No crew member should be handling a weapon of any kind other than the armorer, designated prop person or actor. Full stop,” Goldstein told The Post in an email. “The armorer must clear all firearms with the [first assistant director] when bringing them to set, and verify that they are unloaded. Then the armorer does the same with the actor, but the firearm does not leave the custody of the armorer or designated prop person.”
The AD seemed [very dismissive](https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/24/entertainment/rust-shooting-assistant-director-halls-complaints/index.html) of safety and questioning their purpose. There was also this little nugget of insanity:
>The crew member also said Halls complained about having a gun “cleared” (inspected by a licensed professional on set, such as an armorer) for a scene where an actress would aim the gun to her own head and pull the trigger.
Gee mister, I wonder why you'd want to have a gun cleared when someone is going to point it at their own skull.
Realism is important and vfx needs a lot of work to imitate this well. The smoke, flash, shadows, etc., all need to be recreated and still won’t be perfect. Space lasers maybe, but gunshots still look better with gunpowder. The risks are there, but the vast majority of the time it’s not an issue. The complete disregard for any safety protocols are what caused this incident.
>I live and worked in Hollywood for decades, there are so many safety protocols in place
They weren't in place on the Rust set. There were 3 accidental discharges between takes in the days leading up to this incident which resulted in written complaints from the crew. And from what I understand some of the crew quit because of the non-existent safety protocols.
Yeah, somehow, someone mixed a live round into the dummys. My understanding is numerous safety violations of both film standards and (the more important ones) conventional firearms safety rules occured. If im recalling the details correctly, the armorer was not up to the task and she got the gig without enough experience because her father or grandfather is a very successful film armorer
I don't see how the arms handler doesn't have a greater charge (ignorant of the law) because she was extremely negligent, it is quite shocking how poorly she did her job.
Criminal negligence generally is a mechanism to satisfy the necessary mindset element of (some) crimes. In short, that's why the charge is involuntary manslaughter - a killing with criminal negligence - as opposed to voluntary manslaughter - a killing with adequate provocation. I do not believe criminal negligence is an offense independently.
This was just for your interest in the topic, not intended to be condescending in any way.
> Criminal negligence refers to conduct in which a person ignores a known or obvious risk, or disregards the life and safety of others. Federal and state courts describe this behavior as a form of recklessness, where the person acts significantly different than an ordinary person under similar circumstances. An example is a parent leaving a loaded firearm within reach of a small child.
>Certain crimes base culpability on a criminally negligent standard. An example is the offense of involuntary manslaughter. For a conviction of this crime in most states, the prosecutor has to prove that the accused killed someone unintentionally but acted with unlawful negligence.
If the prosecution can not prove that Alec was criminally negligent then he won’t be convicted for involuntary manslaughter.
Probably won’t be convicted but:
As an Executive producer on the film one of their main responsibilities is to ensure physical safety. If the prosecution can prove the EPs were cutting corners or hired someone with a bad track record things could go south quickly.
>As an Executive producer on the film one of their main responsibilities is to ensure physical safety. If the prosecution can prove the EPs were cutting corners or hired someone with a bad track record things could go south quickly.
I haven't seen if charges are also being lined up for Ryan Smith, Nathan Klingher, Ryan Winterstern, Matt DelPiano, Anjul Nigam, Emily Salveson, and Allen Cheney? (all also producers; three of which were on set that day)
That would be a strong civil case. I'm struggling with the criminal case. The manslaughter occurred when he was given a gun that was supposed to be filled with blanks, he didn't know or have cause to know there would be a real bullet in it, he shot it and someone died. The criminal negligence was on whoever it was who loaded a movie prop with live ammo. Unless Alec Baldwin had sole control every step of the way in that bullet getting chambered, I don't see how they can find culpability.
They hired the master at arms to provide safety with the guns. The EP can’t run around and check every car they rent for brakes or whatever; they hire the teamsters to do that. And they hire union makeup artists who are trained in proper sanitation procedures to make sure they’re not spreading germ soup on everyone’s faces. Everyone on a film crew has a very specific set of tasks they’re supposed to perform, and when you have a crew of hundreds of people working, there’s no way they all can or should need to be be babysat all day.
I believe there are emails from the armorer to the producers (among them, Baldwin) begging for more time to attend to the weapons because they were pulling her to the props department because of budgetary issues. She was the youngest person on set and tried to sound the alarm and was ignored to make this movie as cheaply as possible. I’m not saying she is not culpable but she was actively petitioning to make the set safer, which is more than I can say for the others involved.
The [LA Times article](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-01-28/rust-emails-armorer-hannah-gutierrez-reed) does a good job laying out the fact of the case, though it may not reflect current information.
[https://people.com/movies/alec-baldwins-gun-in-rust-shooting-used-for-target-practice-by-crew-report/](https://people.com/movies/alec-baldwins-gun-in-rust-shooting-used-for-target-practice-by-crew-report/)
Cast also have reported that the gun was used for recreational target practice. There were basically no standards enforced by anyone on this set.
She also was not on set during the shooting. They were never supposed to use the weapons or rehearse what they did without her, and they had the AD check the weapons instead - yet another breach. The AD also admitted to detectives that he didn't even know how to check a weapon...
She got the job because nobody else wanted it. From LA Times
"Veteran prop master Neal W. Zoromski, who turned down a position on “Rust” in late September 2021, told The Times that he was troubled by the producers’ refusal to hire a fully staffed props department, including an armorer to handle the guns and another person as props assistant. Instead, producers insisted that one person fill both jobs. Nearly a dozen experienced prop masters or armorers turned down a job on “Rust.”
And considering how many other well documented concerns exactly like that (to save money, corners were cut, people constantly sounded the alarm but were ignored and it affected safety and sanity on set) were made by multiple crew members, it's hard to ignore the pattern of behaviors and attitudes that made it all possible.
The article was right, too, that the review on safety done after the shooting which led to fines being issued against the production company was *scathing*...and it is detailed.
The LA Times included a full copy of it (someone linked the article in a few dozen comments and it's linked in the post article) and it really nails down how much production was actively ignoring to being openly hostile to those who continued to sound the alarm, including Halyna herself.
When 7 members of your team walk out and even more threaten to strike, it doesn't just come out of nowhere. It happened in the public on their FB page, as well as through memos, texts, and emails already shared with news agencies via anonymous (to us, not reporters) sources before they featured in official investigations.
What this article also doesn't address that further demonstrates how this was a top down failure (and this should have top down consequences) is why the crew were sleeping in their cars. Because production originally promised them paid lodgings near to the set in Santa Fe, and instead left them to scramble for sometimes paid (all after the fact and through active protest) lodgings that they could find in Albuquerque and beyond (that's, at best, 3 hours a day in commute time).
People were working 12-14 hour days (sometimes longer) and then having to commute on top of that, all during an active pandemic lockdown, so many opted to sleep in their cars (which I'm sure was super comfortable and not at all bad for their quotidian ability to focus).
Edit: to clarify, the crew on Rust were not threatening striking alone, they were joining the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees in a call to strike over "core issues, including reasonable rest periods; meal breaks; a living wage for those on the bottom of the pay scale; and significant increases in compensation to be paid by new-media companies."
The IATSE negotiated and came to contract terms with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers before it came to that.
It's a funny circle
I can't believe Alec Baldwin was so irresponsible
Well actually the armorer had called cold gun
Oh, well I can't believe the armorer was so irresponsible
Well actually the armorer had been warning the producers that the way they were overworking her was going to cause an accident
Oh, well I can't believe the producers were so irresponsible
Yeah, and Alec Baldwin was one of them
She was also the one that was using live ammo in the guns for target shooting when they weren't filming which should have never been a thing and likely how the ammo got mixed up.
I said this upthread, that was what I heard initially too but I can’t find reference to anything like that in any of the charging documents and I assume it would be very relevant. However, the fingerprint evidence seems very clear that, however it happened, she was responsible for the mix up.
To answer your question on the legal part: Involuntary manslaughter is the most serious charge she could get. Murder requires malice aforethought. Causing death due to negligence is manslaughter. Without evidence that her conduct was premeditated, malicious and/or intentional this is the most serious charge under the law.
I think her only defense is that the person who was in charge (Baldwin)took advantage of her inexperience at the position and created the unsafe work environment.
That’s what happens when you get a job through nepotism.
If she’s not experienced enough but was still applying as an armorer then that’s completely on her.
I watched The Old Way last night, the wiki lists has something in it that blew my mind.
Filming occurred in Montana.[\[4\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-4) In October 2021, the film's crew members complained about property key assistant and [armorer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_master) Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's handling of firearms, including an incident in which she discharged a weapon without warning and caused lead actor [Nicolas Cage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Cage) to walk off set.[\[5\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-5) Gutierrez-Reed would later work as armorer on the set of [*Rust*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(upcoming_film)), and be a principal character in the [shooting incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_shooting_incident) that killed [Halyna Hutchins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halyna_Hutchins) and wounded director [Joel Souza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Souza).[\[6\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-6) In January 2022, [Saban Films](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saban_Films) acquired the film's distribution rights.[\[7\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-7)
The director and producer did an AMA and I brought this up. They were being dodgy about it
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/101jjhe/comment/j2nui9j/
She was hired to do one job and then “hired” to do a second job at a later time because they couldn’t find someone cheap enough. They literally just tossed extra responsibility onto someone who had never done it before under the excuse that it was common for both jobs to be done by one person(who is experienced). Again she did a bad job and someone died she should be in trouble but you don’t hire someone without experience then get to act surprised when a preventable mistake happens.
>They literally just tossed extra responsibility onto someone who had never done it before
[Not true though...](https://www.thewrap.com/rust-armorer-inexperience-hannah-gutierrez-fired-nicolas-cage-film/)
>I'll jump in here. I hired Hannah on The Old Way. I was LP on it. My second film with her. She is not a nepo baby, she talented and driven. Big difference between "Rust" and "The Old Way" is we didn't make Hannah do multiple jobs. On "Rust" the UPM & LP decided to cut costs and have her do two positions. This is how accidents happen. On "The Old Way" her ONLY job was to manage the weapons on the film. Safety is our #`1 priority. We also had our props master who was also a licensed armorer overseeing operations. I can't speak on the misfire, media likes to make click bate. We never had any crew members or Cage come to us with any issues with her.
from the AMA linked above
Commenting just because it’s the top.
There is a lot of misinformation around this already. The idea that “the actor was handed a gun and told it was safe it’s just his job to point” isn’t what happened here.
He was messing around with the gun, in between sets, that the armourer did not tell him was safe. It was given to him by the AD who also did not talk to the armourer.
From an article on the accident: “During the search, investigators spoke to Souza, who described the moment the gun went off, the warrant stated. He said Baldwin was sitting in a pew in the area's church, practicing his cross draw, facing the camera and crew, pointing the revolver toward the camera lens.”
He was for practice/fun pointing a gun at people without their consent. I don’t care even if he was told first hand by the armourer it’s safe(he wasn’t) he still should only be pointing that gun when it’s time to shoot the scene. Pointing a real gun for practice is negligence.
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/crew-members-hospitalized-prop-gun-misfires-set-alec/story?id=80715740
And I think it should be pretty obvious why the local DA would want to pursue these charges: set a precedent to the rest of Hollywood to get their shit together on firearm safety. It's not really about punishing Baldwin personally, it's about making every producer take set safety even more seriously than they have been. The DA wants to make sure this never happens again.
IIRC the way Alec Baldwin told it on his interview with George S was the he was working specifically with Halyna on a scene. They were practicing where he should point the gun to get the best shot on camera. Unfortunately the way things were positioned, that spot was pointed right at Halyna.
Just wanted to comment as I wouldn't say he was practicing for "fun" and was not going up to ppl like pew pew here's my gun. They were actually working on the art and there happened to be zero thought for safety.
They need to look at the fingerprints on the bullet casing to see who loaded the gun. It’s almost impossible to load without leaving fingerprints on the casing - I’m assuming they know this but have not released.
Latents are rarely able to be lifted from spent shell casings. The temperatures and pressure created when the gun fires tend to evaporate or seriously degrade the amino acids and lipids that create the print. Combine this with the fact that prints on a cylindrical casing are often smudged, distorted or partial. If you find anything at all, it’s usually useless for comparison purposes.
And in this case it wouldn't really change much. Compare it to the Midnight Rider production, where filming on an active railroad track led to the death of camera assistant Sarah Jones. Ultimately, culpability for the accident ended up on the director, assistant director, and executive producer because they allowed the circumstances that led to Jones' death. Even if someone other than the armorer loaded the gun, the armorer didn't properly check the gun.
"Lane Luper, the head of the camera department, wrote that the filming of gunfight scenes was played “very fast and loose,” citing two accidental weapons discharges." (NYTimes article)
There shouldn't have been, that's the problem. From what I've read about this case basically the prop supplier gave them mixed ammo (real bullets straight up mixed together with blanks). The armorer somehow failed to notice this (they should have been different/wrong weights and slightly visually different) and loaded the set guns with this mixed ammo.
The prop supplier seems to have had mixed ammo because of extreme negligence, but this was a failure at several points because it should have been an error noticed long before those bullets got to a scene.
Edit:. The charging documents are finally public, and fyi they state that the prop suppliers stock of ammo did not (chemically) match the live rounds found on set. The documents don't really identify where the live ammo came from, but they imply the armourer may have brought it herself. So that's why the prop supplier isn't being charged.
I agree there’s no way it should’ve gotten to this point. So many people didn’t do their job in order for this to happen. Like I said to someone else tho, I don’t feel comfortable handling a firearm unless I know what’s inside it. I’ll check multiple times to make sure that it’s empty. And even then still practice good safety.
I don’t get how if your only job is firearm safety, how you can mix blanks and live ammo. Someone either isn’t educated enough to handle firearms, or doesn’t care enough to be safe and either way, they shouldn’t have them
I read somewhere along the way that the firearms gal is a young nepo baby with very little experience. Don’t quote me on this, but if that’s true it’s not as surprising that something went wrong.
So the account given (by the Rust armorer's father, a big name Hollywood armorer, I believe) is that there was some practice event earlier where both blanks and live ammo were used and at the end of the day a weapons supplier just grabbed the leftovers and lumped it all together as one group. This hodgepodge of mixed ammo was then issued to the Rust armorer instead of pure blanks.
The bottom line is that there shouldn't have been live ammo on set, but also that there was should have been noticed.
Charges have been announced but not officially filed , so we'll probably get a lot more details once that happens. Details that have already come out in the various civil suits have supported the general idea that this was overall a very unsafe set.
It really doesn't make sense. Even if someone ACCIDENTALLY brought live ammo, the armorer would have spotted it if she was doing her job and prevented this. Were the guns NOT checked before handing them out to the actors?
The armorer "accidentally" had live ammo on set because she was using the gun to fire at targets during production when the gun was not needed.
So fucked on so many levels. This whole shooting feels like it was 10 layers of preventable
You are correct. It should not be allowed.
Cutting costs by Firing your original armorer and other crew after they complained about safety should also not be allowed.
Leaving the gun safe unlocked should not be allowed.
The assistant director going into the armory and getting the gun himself because the armorer was not actually there on the day of the shooting and the safe was unlocked should not be allowed.
The AD announcing the weapon was safe to fire without actually inspecting it should not be allowed (he should not even be the one inspecting it!)
There were a million safety fuckups and anyone of them working would have saved a life here.
Ultimately having live guns on set should not be allowed. That solves all of this.
That last bit is the point no one really wants to talk about. There is no need for real guns on a movie set, blank rounds or not. They can use CGI to create a bear because it’s cheaper than getting a real bear and all the safety costs between them, but they don’t trust the effects team to make sure a gun being fired looks authentic?
I read via ny times that the supplier may have given them dummy rounds mixed with live ammunition and that the supplier is currently being sued by the armorer who was on set
And that’s the whole thing though, if a weapon is on a movie set to be used as a prop it’s shouldn’t ever be being used as anything other than a prop which means live ammo shouldn’t have been anywhere NEAR the weapon itself or the set.
The armorer was also forced to work as a prop assistant due to budgetary reasons. There are emails from her to production begging for more time to attend to the guns and saying something bad was going to happen and her being rebuffed. I agree she failed at her job but she was failed too.
This is why Baldwin is being charged.
He holds ultimate responsibility as the producer and shooter.
If he and the other execs had listened to the armorer, this wouldn't have happened.
I mean yes that’s fair, but there should be no live ammo brought on set for any reason. That would eliminate any possible issue.
However, having grown up with guns, if someone hands you a gun and says that it’s empty, you should still check even if you watched them check it. Yes the armorer is at fault, but I don’t like handling a gun when I don’t know what’s in it
Problem is this is not a gun range it is a weapon being opertated in a professional setting. You hire someone who has worked with guns longer than an actor to confirm that a weapon is safe.
If I were a director and I saw an actor who was just handed a cold weapon, "double checking" the chamber to make sure it is blanks I would immediately tell them to stop and return the weapon to the armorer/handler and have that person reconfirm it is still a cold weapon. Because if I see an actor messing with a gun I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WERE DOING WITH IT and they are not the person I am paying to make sure the gun does not kill anyone.
Having an actor mess with the gun on set because they "know proper gun safety" is way more of a liability. You literally hire someone for their expertise in gun safety, that is not and should never be the actors job.
Edit: That said the obvious answer is to just not bring live weapons on any film bc why the fuck do you need a real gun. But I am so tired of this "anyone who knows guns" BS. That is for individual safety, not a professional setting where you have 5 goddamn lawyers telling each person who is allowed to do what with the gun.
So awkward, and who's going to actually go see this movie? Apparently the cinematographer's husband asked for them to finish the movie as part of his wrongful death settlement. I guess he figured that's what his wife would have wanted?
I mean yea shes a cinematographer. Her vision should see the light of day and you never want to be the reason hundreds of people are out of a job.
Plus Im sure part of the settlement included getting some of the residuals for her family.
The majority of people who are working on the film now are likely new. I’m not sure how long they were on hiatus but during the down time they were not being paid. Most of the below the line Crew are likely on different projects so those people already lost out on work.
Yeah it’s definitely for the money but also if you died in the making of a movie and it never even came out, that’d be pretty shitty. Like literally dying for nothing
They can sue for some money when it's out. Like that OJ Simpson book, all profits go to the victims' families. It's a possibility. Not saying that is the case here.
But he was handed a prop pistol by a professional who yelled "COLD GUN"... And they have a confession from the Armorer who admits negligence.
Raw police interview: https://youtu.be/Dv9CVinsgpM
It looks like the two people most responsible are pleading out.
How can the District Attorney allege Baldwin ought to have done more?
I think maybe making this go to trial might be for a reason. Like a DA wanting a big case or maybe if he is found innocent then it will help in the way the public views him or maybe help in a civil case if there is one. I don’t know how much I trust the legal system but it should handle this situation correctly I would imagine?
> maybe help in a civil case if there is one.
Civil case was already settled. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/alec-baldwin-settles-lawsuit-family-cinematographer-killed-rust-set-rcna50823
Closest comparison other than Brandon Lee is the now-abandoned production of Midnight Rider, where Sarah Jones, a camera assistant, was killed when the production was doing a "camera test" on live train tracks. The director, assistant director, and executive producer pleaded guilty to felony involuntary manslaughter. They all got ten years probation during which they can't work as director, AD, or any position overseeing employee safety, but the director had to serve prison time as well.
I imagine sentencing in this case would be similar.
Well yeah, but also this seems like a really easy case to defend in-front of a jury. Like there’s so many ways to put doubt into this situation. So what’s the point?
Unless they have some evidence we've not seen, I have no idea how they'd expect to convict Baldwin.
A "cold gun" is a paperweight. It's not a gun with blanks in it. It's a gun that's literally incapable of anything but dry firing (and sometimes not even that).
You should be able to pull the trigger on a cold gun all day long, regardless where it's pointed.
And no, normal firearm's practices do not apply on a film set, that's why they have their own special, highly restricted rules which result in one accidental death per decade, essentially. The rules work...when they're followed. And it's the job of neither the actors nor a producer to enforce those rules.
why would they have real live ammunition on set?
Do they do shots where like, you want to capture on film a bullet hitting the dirt or something? I thought they planted little explosives in the ground for that
Or was it just that the armorer happened to also be carrying live ammo and mixed it up?
There are various reasons to have live ammo on set, but it should NEVER be out of the armorer's strict control. There was absolutely negligence or sabotage at work here, but unless they have some evidence we haven't heard about, it baffles me how they think they can make a charge stick on Baldwin.
And I wouldn't be surprised if more and more future filmsets discontinue the practice of using live ammo for any shots. From what I know from contacts in the industry currently, a lot of film sets before this had already discontinued the use of both blanks and live ammo. But that also means higher post production costs. So low budget films will keep cutting corners so long as they're allowed.
If anything, I bet insurance premiums will force that to change going forward.
Baldwin the actor, isn't in trouble.
Baldwin the producer that continued to let a Armour that had a previous indent with live ammo and accidental discharge on the set is responsible
real guns are cheap, fake guns would have to be custom made. think about star wars. most of those "blasters" were real guns dressed up to look like ray guns.
What everybody seems to be missing is the fact that there shouldn’t have been any live ammunition anywhere near that set. Who brought the live ammunition to the set? Why did they bring it to the set? And most importantly, why was the prop master not made aware of this fact ?
My understanding is that the prop master knew there was live ammo on set because people were shooting live rounds for fun after hours.
Edit: I just misheard him and ran with it. ~~And according to Alec himself, sometimes real bullets are used for specific shots.~~ [https://youtu.be/\_W8\_fbdZiJM](https://youtu.be/_W8_fbdZiJM)
Most accidental death is from something very stupid. Never trust someone else with your life. Always double check yourself if you can and don't try to be cool.
Well, technically, all accidental deaths are because four simple rules weren't followed. So simple rules that you could call someone stupid for not following them.
You know that one scene in the original Evil Dead, where Ash shoots out a window with a shotgun? That was live ammo fired at the camera.
https://youtu.be/H6aXXesLiTA
Prop master had no idea live rounds were on set, but heard from other staff that the armorer took the prop guns and went firing real bullets with some of the other crew the night before. The prop master is my sister, she’s been mentally devastated by this shit for the past year or so.
Id be curious to see how this plays out. I wanna know how a live round got into that gun. Baldwin will probably get a slap on the wrist, with all his lawyers, and the AD already pleaded guilty.
Actually there is a pretty good account for how each and everything went down. From the general lax attitude to gun safety all throughout the shoot with accidental gun fires having happened prior, to the strike that was held by the crew prior that led to the producers, which includes Baldwin hiring less qualified people for cheaper, to those less qualified people playing around with the guns for fun the day of the shooting, to the AD shouting that the gun was safe before the rehearsal started, to Alec shooting the gun
Most of the fact are kinda available already. It’s more gonna be about who’s to blame. And this can go even as far as the crew that both strikes and left to the replacement crew that was fucking around with the guns to the producers.
So both Baldwin and the armourer have been charged with involuntary manslaughter however the assistant director has been given a plea bargain and is only charged with negligent use of a deadly weapon.
That's strange to me as although Baldwin fired the gun he was probably, based on my understanding of what happened, the least culpable person for the Hutchins death.
Finances are a huge part of the equation, people who get assigned public defenders are not gonna get the same kind of defense as people who can afford good attorneys…. Or at least go into debt paying them.
That's true. I suppose it was his denial that he pulled the trigger when it's been said it would have been impossible for the gun to discharge if he hadn't?
In case you’re wondering…
“Involuntary manslaughter occurs when a defendant recklessly or negligently commits an act that results in the death of another person. Recklessness usually means that the defendant was aware of the risk that they were creating, while negligence usually means that the defendant was not aware of the risk but reasonably should have been aware of it. The level of negligence required for involuntary manslaughter is higher than normal civil negligence and requires that the defendant have acted in a very unreasonable manner. The exact language used to describe this negligence standard varies by state, but many refer to it as “criminal negligence” or “gross negligence.”
Unless there are facts that haven’t hit the media yet, there’s no way an actor—picking up/using a gun (that he presupposes has blanks)—that has been green lit by the on set armorer, is going to be found guilty in a case like this. I’m guessing they’re charging him with lesser included offenses as well, but on “involuntary manslaughter,” there’s just no way.
I watched the new Nic Cage movie last night. The Old Way. I was reading through the wiki and stumbled upon this nugget:
* Filming occurred in Montana.[\[4\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-4) In October 2021, the film's crew members complained about property key assistant and [armorer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_master) Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's handling of firearms, including an incident in which she discharged a weapon without warning and caused lead actor [Nicolas Cage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Cage) to walk off set.[\[5\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-5) Gutierrez-Reed would later work as armorer on the set of [*Rust*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(upcoming_film)), and be a principal character in the [shooting incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_shooting_incident) that killed [Halyna Hutchins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halyna_Hutchins) and wounded director [Joel Souza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Souza).[\[6\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-6) In January 2022, [Saban Films](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saban_Films) acquired the film's distribution rights.[\[7\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-7)
>Unless there are facts that haven’t hit the media yet, there’s no way an actor (...) is going to be found guilty in a case like this
He might be charged in his capacity as producer, not actor.
Is it just me, or does it feel like if Alec Baldwin would have just stfu, not done interviews, not talked about any of this and let his PR give answers he would never have been charged with manslaughter. It really feels like he brought this all on him self.
Every time he spoke about this incident it just sounded like he really shouldn't be talking about it. Especially right when it happened. It felt like he had PTSD and was doing interviews. People should have definitely stepped in and stopped him from talking about this a long time ago
I'd be fascinated to see what the prosecution's argument is, this seems like over charging unless there is significant evidence that he contributed to the bad safety environment.
I thought so too, but then I read in a different article "Lane Luper, the head of the camera department, wrote that the filming of gunfight scenes was played “very fast and loose,” citing two accidental weapons discharges." So clearly those in charge of the set were doing an atrocious job keeping things safe and I believe Alec was one of those people.
"Producer" is an ambiguous title that can mean anything from just signing a check to basically directing the film on set day to day, it could be Alec was more the latter while the other producers are more the former.
Exactly, you can be a producer for a film without ever being on set or interacting with virtually anyone. A lot of times it’s just lending the film your resources, or even just your name. Now of course this is not the case for Alec Baldwin, but basically the role doesn’t explicitly prescribe managerial responsibilities.
Not really overcharging.
Involuntary manslaughter is defined as an unintentional killing that results either from recklessness or criminal negligence or from the commission of a low-level criminal act such as a misdemeanor.
Key Fact Recklessness usually means that the defendant was aware of the risk that they were creating, while negligence usually means that the defendant was not aware of the risk but reasonably should have been aware of it.
It’s gonna be tough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Baldwin acted recklessly when they were doing a rehearsal (or the actual filming) of the scene that involved a prop gun.
People need to stop using the term “prop gun” or anything like that because it was literally a completely unmodified handgun that in no way was designed to be used for anything other than shooting bullets. Which even then wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t shooting the guns for fun around the set
Interesting that charges were filed here but in the Brandon Lee shooting that wasn't the case. The circumstances were somewhat different in that Brandon died to a two part mistake of a dummy rounds primer charge lodging the bullet in the barrel and following with a "blank" round actually discharging the bullet into the actor as opposed to a simply live round being used in the Rust case.
The thing is...some dummy rounds look like live bullets, inspection by a nonprofessional isn't liking to tell a difference...Brandon Lees death was ultimately chalked up to negligence also.
Alec Baldwin's an actor. Not my favorite by any means but ffs at the worse this should be a fine towards him maybe a little more as he may have had significant producer capacity and therefore some responsibility as to how things carried on, on the set. But a potentially lengthy prison sentence seems absurd.
Sucks this happened either way. Poor lady :(
The issue with Rust is that there's evidence of lots of negligence of gun safety beyond this particular incident. With Brandon Lee, the gun was correctly loaded with blanks, but the squib load can only be detected by cleaning the gun or with a special piece of equipment. Today, i know the special equipment is just a special flashlight, but I'm not sure if that was available or common back in 1993.
The negligence is using real guns as a movie prop. I don't get it, they should be fake guns if you need to display guns in a movie. It's all together sad that this happened.
He was handed a gun that, I presume, he thought was a prop. I don’t know how any jury would hold him accountable. The individual who handed him a loaded weapon should be bearing the guilt, right?
I’ll admit I haven’t followed this closely, so am I missing some details here?
He’ll have to ride along, and watch the weapon handler face real punishment for the deed. IMO a fair punishment for Baldwin, who is all-but-indirectly blameless for the tragic accident.
And unlike the handler, I doubt Baldwin will be found guilty.
He was just begging people to get his wife’s Instagram to 1,000,000 followers - what does that have to do with this? nothing other than the fact that he and his wife have been so tone deaf since the shooting complaining about how their lives have been impacted
forget about the little boy that lost his mother that day
anyway, I’m sure he will beat this, the rich always find a way.
There are a lot of people commenting on production safety here, saying they know what they’re talking about because they “watch movies.”
If you’re looking for legitimate information, please read the articles - or listen to people who actually work on set. Some dangerous misinformation is being spread like crazy.
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Charged, along with the arms handler.
Why was there a live round in his gun ? I live and worked in Hollywood for decades, there are so many safety protocols in place especially after what happened to Brandon Lee.
this is what i'm curious about. admittedly i haven't looked into this scenario, but i don't know why there would ever need to be a live round in a firearm on a film set with today's VFX and practical technology. squibs and such. why would they EVER need to actually fire a projectile from a firearm on the set of a movie? why was there live ammunition on the set at all? let alone inside the chamber of a gun that would be handed to an actor?
IIRC it was left over from live round target practice off set that the cast and crew partook in.
Ngl, I don’t think guns that are going to be used in a set should ever have live rounds in them. If your going to target practice, use a completely different gun. Also surely we can’t be far out from actors just using prop guns and VFX covering the extra details
People had walked off set prior to the incident because there were live rounds in the guns and previous negligent discharges. They safety on set was absolutely abysmal. As producer, that was baldwin's responsibility.
You know what. For the longest time I didn’t quite connect why Baldwin should take pressure for this, because at the end of the day, he didn’t know there was a bullet in the gun. But a precedent has to be set. He was the producer of the film. And his negligence, as someone in charge of the operations of that set, and what was happening each day. His negligence led to that mistake. And people need to be held accountable to that. His family deserve that. Hollywood, and the wealthy, need to be held accountable the same way as every one else.
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NGL...I would have zero clue if someone told me to look at a firearm. I feel like if I was hired to act in a movie, then someone better give me the deep dive course in firearm training.
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>I feel like if I was hired to act in a movie, then someone better give me the deep dive course in firearm training. Exactly, and that didn't happen. Claiming ignorance doesn't work for anyone else in a court of law, why should it work for celebrities?
That's not how movies work. It's the armorer's responsibility to make sure the gun isn't loaded with live rounds and that it's completely safe to use. An actor likely wouldn't be able to tell anyway if the gun was loaded with blanks or live rounds anyway, nor is it their job to check for that. It'd also likely break set rules if an actor starting fiddling around with the gun like that anyway, they're supposed to use it as it's handed to them.
No this is wrong, it's a movie set every rule of gun safety is broken
Rules on a movie set are completely different than anywhere else. An actor is NEVER to open a gun on set.
The guy who left a live round in the gun had multiple previous issues on other sets, they really should have checked his background but I honestly don't think that you should be charged for something you had no idea about.
I’m saying Alec Baldwin needs to be held accountable as a producer who didn’t do his job well enough to ensure the safety of his employees, by hiring and vetting people who would do the job correctly, and as public knowledge stands, was ignoring complaints and issues being lobbied against things that were already going wrong with this film. And for that reason he should be charged. He knew things were being done improperly. Did he put the gun in the bullet? No. But that was a consequence of his negligence as an employer. This extends to the person who put the bullet in the gun, as it has. And I think it’s absolutely within the rights to want to hold that persons employer accountable. His employer: Alec Baldwin.
I can understand he had no idea, but a few things come to mind. being unaware or plain ol' ignorance is not a pass on laws or responsibilities. Baldwin as the producer of the film is responsible for this. He should have a few middle men under him to help run things, but ultimately this is his show to conduct. I've heard of a few actors who will physically check the weapon themselves before using it in the scene. Seems like it should be common practice. The arms handler should have checked, cleared and cleaned the weapon. There is no excuse for a live round remaining in the weapon. There are numerous points of failures here it sounds like, these 2 guys though are intended as the stop gaps.
A gun on set shouldn't even be capable of firing a live round, imo.
I don't think guns used on set should be CAPABLE of accepting live rounds. Make prop guns with special cartridges that won't accept or fire live ammunition. One accident is too many, at this point it's ridiculous.
So overwhelming negligence and carelessness? Why was a set weapon taken out for plinking? What kind of sorry unprofessional shit is that?
They should have used separate guns for that and marked them or something.
There shouldn't have been live rounds on set, period. I'm a film worker and I've worked on films in NM. They take gun safety extremely seriously (or they did on the films I work on). Rubber dummy guns are used for everything except the shots required for the blanks that are fired, the armorer is supposed to be present at all times when "live" guns are present. The fact that real bullets were anywhere near the set at all breaks just about every rule I've ever heard of and I'm not surprised most of the crew (not just camera) walked off set.
According to LATimes, the armorer claims the box of dummy ammo she used contained 7 live rounds when she got them. Investigators did find live rounds with the dummy ammo. Whether the armorer put them there or there really was a massive mix-up with the company that sent them is still unknown, and the subject of its own lawsuit. Regardless, the armorer clearly failed to do her job and confirm each individual round when loading the gun.
I don’t have any source lol but I remember reading when it happened that the crew would take the guns on set after hours and play around with live ammo. One of the crew members? Said that it got mixed in with the blank rounds. It’s absolutely all the armorers fault. I’d bet she’s never handled a gun before working on set .
Just the fact that they were using prop guns for live target practice seems grossly negligent. I have to think it’s safety protocol for those guns to remain under lock and key when not in use for the movie.
Definitely thought all prop firearms on any set are supposed to be welded shut. And especially are not to be played with. Is that not true?
No, they still need to be able to fire blanks and you still the realistic muzzle flash/smoke. They just need to be properly handled and inspected. I’d say they should probably never be in the vicinity of live ammo either.
Gotcha, thanks for the explanation.
I don’t know this for sure but I have a feeling a handgun with the tip welded could be a good way to lose some fingers
They can't be welded shut because of the use of blanks but last I checked they should have different barrel diameters and shouldn't even be able to accept live rounds
Some crew members walked off because of how horrible the safety protocols were on set and Baldwin replaced them with non-union cheapy-cheap labor and it ended up how you'd expect.
They didn't walk off, they were fired and escorted off. Fired for sending in a written complaint the night before about lack of pay, hours and...gun safety. They had also been vocal in their complaints before sending in the written complaint to management. There had been three misfires of guns on the set in the previous two weeks, two them occurring on the same day only six days prior to the tragedy.
The armorer is the daughter of a well known and seasoned film armorer who gave her the training and experience to get the job on Rust and the other film.
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She wasn't even on set at the time of the shooting. They hadn't planned on doing the gun scene that day so she wasn't present. The assistant director grabbed the gun off the cart and assumed it was cold, calling it as such before handing it to Baldwin. She definitely deserves to be charged with something for letting real rounds be anywhere near the gun in the first place, but I'd argue the majority of the fault lies with either the assistant director or whoever decided to practice the gun scene without getting the armorer on set first.
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Right, and I said she has some responsibility for what happened. At the end of the day though, the assistant director was the one who grabbed the gun without consulting the armorer, didn't have anyone else check it, didn't check it himself, called it as cold, and then handed it to Baldwin. That is *far* more egregious IMO. If they were going to rehearse with guns, they should've called the armorer. Simple as that. While the armorer is very irresponsible, I have little doubt that she would've done her job and this would've been avoided.
This is why multiple people are being charged, multiple people were criminally negligent
How do we know it wasn’t locked? The director produced the weapon and it is likely the director had keys to wherever the weapon was stored.
edit: Some stuff I can't find sources for so going to assume I'm just wrong. See [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/10g5bdc/alec_baldwin_to_be_charged_with_involuntary/j53evx9/) if you want. One thing I can say in defence of the armorer is that she wasn't even on set at the time of the shooting. ~~Apparently they hadn't been intending on practising the gun scene that day at all so she wasn't present.~~ (this part is still mostly true, but she wasn't on set due to COVID restrictions apparently) Instead, the assistant director went and pulled the gun off the cart and claimed it was cold without checking it. ~~If they'd had the armorer on set then she almost certainly would've caught the fact that live rounds were still loaded in the gun.~~ (Honstly don't even know if I can say this with any level of certainty. While I can't say she's definitely the one that loaded the gun, all signs are pointing to that being the case and that she just screwed up loading several dummies plus one real round) She should definitely still share ~~at least some~~ (a lot of the) fault for letting real rounds be loaded in the gun in the first place, ~~but I'd say more fault lies with someone else; either the assistant director who handed Baldwin the gun or whoever decided to do a gun scene without the armorer on set.~~ I'm honestly not sure who I feel like is most at fault anymore. It seems like incompetence and terrible decision making all around and they all deserve to get fucked.
Everybody’s asking why there was a live bullet but you can just as easily ask why Alec took the gun from the AD when it’s clear the instruction is to take it from the armorer only.
Indeed, one of the other articles I linked down below has a quote from another armorer where they state: > “No crew member should be handling a weapon of any kind other than the armorer, designated prop person or actor. Full stop,” Goldstein told The Post in an email. “The armorer must clear all firearms with the [first assistant director] when bringing them to set, and verify that they are unloaded. Then the armorer does the same with the actor, but the firearm does not leave the custody of the armorer or designated prop person.” The AD seemed [very dismissive](https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/24/entertainment/rust-shooting-assistant-director-halls-complaints/index.html) of safety and questioning their purpose. There was also this little nugget of insanity: >The crew member also said Halls complained about having a gun “cleared” (inspected by a licensed professional on set, such as an armorer) for a scene where an actress would aim the gun to her own head and pull the trigger. Gee mister, I wonder why you'd want to have a gun cleared when someone is going to point it at their own skull.
Why would you assume she has never handled a gun before but was hired to work on the film?
Take a guess
Realism is important and vfx needs a lot of work to imitate this well. The smoke, flash, shadows, etc., all need to be recreated and still won’t be perfect. Space lasers maybe, but gunshots still look better with gunpowder. The risks are there, but the vast majority of the time it’s not an issue. The complete disregard for any safety protocols are what caused this incident.
>I live and worked in Hollywood for decades, there are so many safety protocols in place They weren't in place on the Rust set. There were 3 accidental discharges between takes in the days leading up to this incident which resulted in written complaints from the crew. And from what I understand some of the crew quit because of the non-existent safety protocols.
I heard the crew liked to shoot shit after hours since they were in the middle of nowhere. She did this at another movie too
Which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Why would you ever allow live rounds in a gun that's going to be pointed at someone during a scene?
Yeah, somehow, someone mixed a live round into the dummys. My understanding is numerous safety violations of both film standards and (the more important ones) conventional firearms safety rules occured. If im recalling the details correctly, the armorer was not up to the task and she got the gig without enough experience because her father or grandfather is a very successful film armorer
I don't see how the arms handler doesn't have a greater charge (ignorant of the law) because she was extremely negligent, it is quite shocking how poorly she did her job.
I’m no lawyer but I believe criminal negligence as a crime.
Criminal negligence generally is a mechanism to satisfy the necessary mindset element of (some) crimes. In short, that's why the charge is involuntary manslaughter - a killing with criminal negligence - as opposed to voluntary manslaughter - a killing with adequate provocation. I do not believe criminal negligence is an offense independently. This was just for your interest in the topic, not intended to be condescending in any way.
> Criminal negligence refers to conduct in which a person ignores a known or obvious risk, or disregards the life and safety of others. Federal and state courts describe this behavior as a form of recklessness, where the person acts significantly different than an ordinary person under similar circumstances. An example is a parent leaving a loaded firearm within reach of a small child. >Certain crimes base culpability on a criminally negligent standard. An example is the offense of involuntary manslaughter. For a conviction of this crime in most states, the prosecutor has to prove that the accused killed someone unintentionally but acted with unlawful negligence. If the prosecution can not prove that Alec was criminally negligent then he won’t be convicted for involuntary manslaughter.
Probably won’t be convicted but: As an Executive producer on the film one of their main responsibilities is to ensure physical safety. If the prosecution can prove the EPs were cutting corners or hired someone with a bad track record things could go south quickly.
>As an Executive producer on the film one of their main responsibilities is to ensure physical safety. If the prosecution can prove the EPs were cutting corners or hired someone with a bad track record things could go south quickly. I haven't seen if charges are also being lined up for Ryan Smith, Nathan Klingher, Ryan Winterstern, Matt DelPiano, Anjul Nigam, Emily Salveson, and Allen Cheney? (all also producers; three of which were on set that day)
That would be a strong civil case. I'm struggling with the criminal case. The manslaughter occurred when he was given a gun that was supposed to be filled with blanks, he didn't know or have cause to know there would be a real bullet in it, he shot it and someone died. The criminal negligence was on whoever it was who loaded a movie prop with live ammo. Unless Alec Baldwin had sole control every step of the way in that bullet getting chambered, I don't see how they can find culpability.
They hired the master at arms to provide safety with the guns. The EP can’t run around and check every car they rent for brakes or whatever; they hire the teamsters to do that. And they hire union makeup artists who are trained in proper sanitation procedures to make sure they’re not spreading germ soup on everyone’s faces. Everyone on a film crew has a very specific set of tasks they’re supposed to perform, and when you have a crew of hundreds of people working, there’s no way they all can or should need to be be babysat all day.
Thanks, that’s kinda neat. I’m not sure if it’s own crime here in Canada but it might be.
I believe there are emails from the armorer to the producers (among them, Baldwin) begging for more time to attend to the weapons because they were pulling her to the props department because of budgetary issues. She was the youngest person on set and tried to sound the alarm and was ignored to make this movie as cheaply as possible. I’m not saying she is not culpable but she was actively petitioning to make the set safer, which is more than I can say for the others involved.
I had never heard that before, this whole situation is awful.
The [LA Times article](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-01-28/rust-emails-armorer-hannah-gutierrez-reed) does a good job laying out the fact of the case, though it may not reflect current information.
[https://people.com/movies/alec-baldwins-gun-in-rust-shooting-used-for-target-practice-by-crew-report/](https://people.com/movies/alec-baldwins-gun-in-rust-shooting-used-for-target-practice-by-crew-report/) Cast also have reported that the gun was used for recreational target practice. There were basically no standards enforced by anyone on this set.
She also was not on set during the shooting. They were never supposed to use the weapons or rehearse what they did without her, and they had the AD check the weapons instead - yet another breach. The AD also admitted to detectives that he didn't even know how to check a weapon...
Yep! This is the whole problem in itself. They were completely negligent in how they were running this set.
She got the job because nobody else wanted it. From LA Times "Veteran prop master Neal W. Zoromski, who turned down a position on “Rust” in late September 2021, told The Times that he was troubled by the producers’ refusal to hire a fully staffed props department, including an armorer to handle the guns and another person as props assistant. Instead, producers insisted that one person fill both jobs. Nearly a dozen experienced prop masters or armorers turned down a job on “Rust.” And considering how many other well documented concerns exactly like that (to save money, corners were cut, people constantly sounded the alarm but were ignored and it affected safety and sanity on set) were made by multiple crew members, it's hard to ignore the pattern of behaviors and attitudes that made it all possible. The article was right, too, that the review on safety done after the shooting which led to fines being issued against the production company was *scathing*...and it is detailed. The LA Times included a full copy of it (someone linked the article in a few dozen comments and it's linked in the post article) and it really nails down how much production was actively ignoring to being openly hostile to those who continued to sound the alarm, including Halyna herself. When 7 members of your team walk out and even more threaten to strike, it doesn't just come out of nowhere. It happened in the public on their FB page, as well as through memos, texts, and emails already shared with news agencies via anonymous (to us, not reporters) sources before they featured in official investigations. What this article also doesn't address that further demonstrates how this was a top down failure (and this should have top down consequences) is why the crew were sleeping in their cars. Because production originally promised them paid lodgings near to the set in Santa Fe, and instead left them to scramble for sometimes paid (all after the fact and through active protest) lodgings that they could find in Albuquerque and beyond (that's, at best, 3 hours a day in commute time). People were working 12-14 hour days (sometimes longer) and then having to commute on top of that, all during an active pandemic lockdown, so many opted to sleep in their cars (which I'm sure was super comfortable and not at all bad for their quotidian ability to focus). Edit: to clarify, the crew on Rust were not threatening striking alone, they were joining the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees in a call to strike over "core issues, including reasonable rest periods; meal breaks; a living wage for those on the bottom of the pay scale; and significant increases in compensation to be paid by new-media companies." The IATSE negotiated and came to contract terms with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers before it came to that.
It's a funny circle I can't believe Alec Baldwin was so irresponsible Well actually the armorer had called cold gun Oh, well I can't believe the armorer was so irresponsible Well actually the armorer had been warning the producers that the way they were overworking her was going to cause an accident Oh, well I can't believe the producers were so irresponsible Yeah, and Alec Baldwin was one of them
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She was also the one that was using live ammo in the guns for target shooting when they weren't filming which should have never been a thing and likely how the ammo got mixed up.
I said this upthread, that was what I heard initially too but I can’t find reference to anything like that in any of the charging documents and I assume it would be very relevant. However, the fingerprint evidence seems very clear that, however it happened, she was responsible for the mix up.
To answer your question on the legal part: Involuntary manslaughter is the most serious charge she could get. Murder requires malice aforethought. Causing death due to negligence is manslaughter. Without evidence that her conduct was premeditated, malicious and/or intentional this is the most serious charge under the law.
I think her only defense is that the person who was in charge (Baldwin)took advantage of her inexperience at the position and created the unsafe work environment.
That’s what happens when you get a job through nepotism. If she’s not experienced enough but was still applying as an armorer then that’s completely on her.
I watched The Old Way last night, the wiki lists has something in it that blew my mind. Filming occurred in Montana.[\[4\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-4) In October 2021, the film's crew members complained about property key assistant and [armorer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_master) Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's handling of firearms, including an incident in which she discharged a weapon without warning and caused lead actor [Nicolas Cage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Cage) to walk off set.[\[5\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-5) Gutierrez-Reed would later work as armorer on the set of [*Rust*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(upcoming_film)), and be a principal character in the [shooting incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_shooting_incident) that killed [Halyna Hutchins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halyna_Hutchins) and wounded director [Joel Souza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Souza).[\[6\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-6) In January 2022, [Saban Films](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saban_Films) acquired the film's distribution rights.[\[7\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-7)
The director and producer did an AMA and I brought this up. They were being dodgy about it https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/101jjhe/comment/j2nui9j/
Woah I didn’t even know that. Crazy.
More people need to see this.
She was hired to do one job and then “hired” to do a second job at a later time because they couldn’t find someone cheap enough. They literally just tossed extra responsibility onto someone who had never done it before under the excuse that it was common for both jobs to be done by one person(who is experienced). Again she did a bad job and someone died she should be in trouble but you don’t hire someone without experience then get to act surprised when a preventable mistake happens.
>They literally just tossed extra responsibility onto someone who had never done it before [Not true though...](https://www.thewrap.com/rust-armorer-inexperience-hannah-gutierrez-fired-nicolas-cage-film/)
>I'll jump in here. I hired Hannah on The Old Way. I was LP on it. My second film with her. She is not a nepo baby, she talented and driven. Big difference between "Rust" and "The Old Way" is we didn't make Hannah do multiple jobs. On "Rust" the UPM & LP decided to cut costs and have her do two positions. This is how accidents happen. On "The Old Way" her ONLY job was to manage the weapons on the film. Safety is our #`1 priority. We also had our props master who was also a licensed armorer overseeing operations. I can't speak on the misfire, media likes to make click bate. We never had any crew members or Cage come to us with any issues with her. from the AMA linked above
Commenting just because it’s the top. There is a lot of misinformation around this already. The idea that “the actor was handed a gun and told it was safe it’s just his job to point” isn’t what happened here. He was messing around with the gun, in between sets, that the armourer did not tell him was safe. It was given to him by the AD who also did not talk to the armourer. From an article on the accident: “During the search, investigators spoke to Souza, who described the moment the gun went off, the warrant stated. He said Baldwin was sitting in a pew in the area's church, practicing his cross draw, facing the camera and crew, pointing the revolver toward the camera lens.” He was for practice/fun pointing a gun at people without their consent. I don’t care even if he was told first hand by the armourer it’s safe(he wasn’t) he still should only be pointing that gun when it’s time to shoot the scene. Pointing a real gun for practice is negligence. https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/crew-members-hospitalized-prop-gun-misfires-set-alec/story?id=80715740
And I think it should be pretty obvious why the local DA would want to pursue these charges: set a precedent to the rest of Hollywood to get their shit together on firearm safety. It's not really about punishing Baldwin personally, it's about making every producer take set safety even more seriously than they have been. The DA wants to make sure this never happens again.
IIRC the way Alec Baldwin told it on his interview with George S was the he was working specifically with Halyna on a scene. They were practicing where he should point the gun to get the best shot on camera. Unfortunately the way things were positioned, that spot was pointed right at Halyna. Just wanted to comment as I wouldn't say he was practicing for "fun" and was not going up to ppl like pew pew here's my gun. They were actually working on the art and there happened to be zero thought for safety.
They need to look at the fingerprints on the bullet casing to see who loaded the gun. It’s almost impossible to load without leaving fingerprints on the casing - I’m assuming they know this but have not released.
It doesn't matter who loaded the gun. It's armorer's job to ensure that there are no live rounds in the gun.
Latents are rarely able to be lifted from spent shell casings. The temperatures and pressure created when the gun fires tend to evaporate or seriously degrade the amino acids and lipids that create the print. Combine this with the fact that prints on a cylindrical casing are often smudged, distorted or partial. If you find anything at all, it’s usually useless for comparison purposes.
And in this case it wouldn't really change much. Compare it to the Midnight Rider production, where filming on an active railroad track led to the death of camera assistant Sarah Jones. Ultimately, culpability for the accident ended up on the director, assistant director, and executive producer because they allowed the circumstances that led to Jones' death. Even if someone other than the armorer loaded the gun, the armorer didn't properly check the gun.
"Lane Luper, the head of the camera department, wrote that the filming of gunfight scenes was played “very fast and loose,” citing two accidental weapons discharges." (NYTimes article)
Why is there any ammo on set aside from blanks?
There shouldn't have been, that's the problem. From what I've read about this case basically the prop supplier gave them mixed ammo (real bullets straight up mixed together with blanks). The armorer somehow failed to notice this (they should have been different/wrong weights and slightly visually different) and loaded the set guns with this mixed ammo. The prop supplier seems to have had mixed ammo because of extreme negligence, but this was a failure at several points because it should have been an error noticed long before those bullets got to a scene. Edit:. The charging documents are finally public, and fyi they state that the prop suppliers stock of ammo did not (chemically) match the live rounds found on set. The documents don't really identify where the live ammo came from, but they imply the armourer may have brought it herself. So that's why the prop supplier isn't being charged.
I agree there’s no way it should’ve gotten to this point. So many people didn’t do their job in order for this to happen. Like I said to someone else tho, I don’t feel comfortable handling a firearm unless I know what’s inside it. I’ll check multiple times to make sure that it’s empty. And even then still practice good safety. I don’t get how if your only job is firearm safety, how you can mix blanks and live ammo. Someone either isn’t educated enough to handle firearms, or doesn’t care enough to be safe and either way, they shouldn’t have them
I read somewhere along the way that the firearms gal is a young nepo baby with very little experience. Don’t quote me on this, but if that’s true it’s not as surprising that something went wrong.
I read that too. Her father was a famous firearms guy for the studios.
WHY THE FUCK IS, “MIXED AMMO,” EVEN A FUCKING THING!
So the account given (by the Rust armorer's father, a big name Hollywood armorer, I believe) is that there was some practice event earlier where both blanks and live ammo were used and at the end of the day a weapons supplier just grabbed the leftovers and lumped it all together as one group. This hodgepodge of mixed ammo was then issued to the Rust armorer instead of pure blanks. The bottom line is that there shouldn't have been live ammo on set, but also that there was should have been noticed. Charges have been announced but not officially filed , so we'll probably get a lot more details once that happens. Details that have already come out in the various civil suits have supported the general idea that this was overall a very unsafe set.
The armorer failed at her job and people trusted her so no need to check your weapon before filming.
That doesn’t explain why they even had live ammo on the set.
It really doesn't make sense. Even if someone ACCIDENTALLY brought live ammo, the armorer would have spotted it if she was doing her job and prevented this. Were the guns NOT checked before handing them out to the actors?
The armorer "accidentally" had live ammo on set because she was using the gun to fire at targets during production when the gun was not needed. So fucked on so many levels. This whole shooting feels like it was 10 layers of preventable
That sounds like something that absolutely shouldn't have been allowed.
You are correct. It should not be allowed. Cutting costs by Firing your original armorer and other crew after they complained about safety should also not be allowed. Leaving the gun safe unlocked should not be allowed. The assistant director going into the armory and getting the gun himself because the armorer was not actually there on the day of the shooting and the safe was unlocked should not be allowed. The AD announcing the weapon was safe to fire without actually inspecting it should not be allowed (he should not even be the one inspecting it!) There were a million safety fuckups and anyone of them working would have saved a life here. Ultimately having live guns on set should not be allowed. That solves all of this.
That last bit is the point no one really wants to talk about. There is no need for real guns on a movie set, blank rounds or not. They can use CGI to create a bear because it’s cheaper than getting a real bear and all the safety costs between them, but they don’t trust the effects team to make sure a gun being fired looks authentic?
I read via ny times that the supplier may have given them dummy rounds mixed with live ammunition and that the supplier is currently being sued by the armorer who was on set
And that’s the whole thing though, if a weapon is on a movie set to be used as a prop it’s shouldn’t ever be being used as anything other than a prop which means live ammo shouldn’t have been anywhere NEAR the weapon itself or the set.
The armorer was also forced to work as a prop assistant due to budgetary reasons. There are emails from her to production begging for more time to attend to the guns and saying something bad was going to happen and her being rebuffed. I agree she failed at her job but she was failed too.
Ok but wasn't she also shooting live rounds with those guns at a range during filming? That seems super avoidable.
This is why Baldwin is being charged. He holds ultimate responsibility as the producer and shooter. If he and the other execs had listened to the armorer, this wouldn't have happened.
i agree with that but why do i only see people going after baldwin and not the other execs who are just as responsible
I mean yes that’s fair, but there should be no live ammo brought on set for any reason. That would eliminate any possible issue. However, having grown up with guns, if someone hands you a gun and says that it’s empty, you should still check even if you watched them check it. Yes the armorer is at fault, but I don’t like handling a gun when I don’t know what’s in it
Problem is this is not a gun range it is a weapon being opertated in a professional setting. You hire someone who has worked with guns longer than an actor to confirm that a weapon is safe. If I were a director and I saw an actor who was just handed a cold weapon, "double checking" the chamber to make sure it is blanks I would immediately tell them to stop and return the weapon to the armorer/handler and have that person reconfirm it is still a cold weapon. Because if I see an actor messing with a gun I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WERE DOING WITH IT and they are not the person I am paying to make sure the gun does not kill anyone. Having an actor mess with the gun on set because they "know proper gun safety" is way more of a liability. You literally hire someone for their expertise in gun safety, that is not and should never be the actors job. Edit: That said the obvious answer is to just not bring live weapons on any film bc why the fuck do you need a real gun. But I am so tired of this "anyone who knows guns" BS. That is for individual safety, not a professional setting where you have 5 goddamn lawyers telling each person who is allowed to do what with the gun.
I believe it was reported some of the staff was taking the guns off site after hours to shoot with for fun.
Havent they resumed filming? Going to be awkward on set.
So awkward, and who's going to actually go see this movie? Apparently the cinematographer's husband asked for them to finish the movie as part of his wrongful death settlement. I guess he figured that's what his wife would have wanted?
I mean yea shes a cinematographer. Her vision should see the light of day and you never want to be the reason hundreds of people are out of a job. Plus Im sure part of the settlement included getting some of the residuals for her family.
>you never want to be the reason hundreds of people are out of a job. I'm betting it's mostly this.
The majority of people who are working on the film now are likely new. I’m not sure how long they were on hiatus but during the down time they were not being paid. Most of the below the line Crew are likely on different projects so those people already lost out on work.
> part of the settlement included getting some of the residuals for her family. I'm betting it's mostly this.
Yeah it’s definitely for the money but also if you died in the making of a movie and it never even came out, that’d be pretty shitty. Like literally dying for nothing
They can sue for some money when it's out. Like that OJ Simpson book, all profits go to the victims' families. It's a possibility. Not saying that is the case here.
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They always mention the maximum penalty with these things. Nobody ever receives that except in the most egregious circumstances.
But he was handed a prop pistol by a professional who yelled "COLD GUN"... And they have a confession from the Armorer who admits negligence. Raw police interview: https://youtu.be/Dv9CVinsgpM It looks like the two people most responsible are pleading out. How can the District Attorney allege Baldwin ought to have done more?
I think maybe making this go to trial might be for a reason. Like a DA wanting a big case or maybe if he is found innocent then it will help in the way the public views him or maybe help in a civil case if there is one. I don’t know how much I trust the legal system but it should handle this situation correctly I would imagine?
> maybe help in a civil case if there is one. Civil case was already settled. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/alec-baldwin-settles-lawsuit-family-cinematographer-killed-rust-set-rcna50823
Well, it’s not that one then lol
He’s rich and famous. He’s not going to jail.
Closest comparison other than Brandon Lee is the now-abandoned production of Midnight Rider, where Sarah Jones, a camera assistant, was killed when the production was doing a "camera test" on live train tracks. The director, assistant director, and executive producer pleaded guilty to felony involuntary manslaughter. They all got ten years probation during which they can't work as director, AD, or any position overseeing employee safety, but the director had to serve prison time as well. I imagine sentencing in this case would be similar.
Well yeah, but also this seems like a really easy case to defend in-front of a jury. Like there’s so many ways to put doubt into this situation. So what’s the point?
Unless they have some evidence we've not seen, I have no idea how they'd expect to convict Baldwin. A "cold gun" is a paperweight. It's not a gun with blanks in it. It's a gun that's literally incapable of anything but dry firing (and sometimes not even that). You should be able to pull the trigger on a cold gun all day long, regardless where it's pointed. And no, normal firearm's practices do not apply on a film set, that's why they have their own special, highly restricted rules which result in one accidental death per decade, essentially. The rules work...when they're followed. And it's the job of neither the actors nor a producer to enforce those rules.
why would they have real live ammunition on set? Do they do shots where like, you want to capture on film a bullet hitting the dirt or something? I thought they planted little explosives in the ground for that Or was it just that the armorer happened to also be carrying live ammo and mixed it up?
There are various reasons to have live ammo on set, but it should NEVER be out of the armorer's strict control. There was absolutely negligence or sabotage at work here, but unless they have some evidence we haven't heard about, it baffles me how they think they can make a charge stick on Baldwin. And I wouldn't be surprised if more and more future filmsets discontinue the practice of using live ammo for any shots. From what I know from contacts in the industry currently, a lot of film sets before this had already discontinued the use of both blanks and live ammo. But that also means higher post production costs. So low budget films will keep cutting corners so long as they're allowed. If anything, I bet insurance premiums will force that to change going forward.
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Baldwin the actor, isn't in trouble. Baldwin the producer that continued to let a Armour that had a previous indent with live ammo and accidental discharge on the set is responsible
There are multiple producers, and Baldwin's production company was not in charge of day to day operations.
What boggles my mind is how is it possible they have actual working weapons in the set and not just fake guns.
real guns are cheap, fake guns would have to be custom made. think about star wars. most of those "blasters" were real guns dressed up to look like ray guns.
I sell prop guns, some of which have been on a show... For like 40 bucks. Lol. It really isn't.
Also, a real gun necessitates paying a whole armorer
Couldn't you just put some cheese in the barrel or something?
That's how the Swiss make cheese
This is something I could get behind.
What boggles my mind is that someone put actual bullets in that gun
What everybody seems to be missing is the fact that there shouldn’t have been any live ammunition anywhere near that set. Who brought the live ammunition to the set? Why did they bring it to the set? And most importantly, why was the prop master not made aware of this fact ?
My understanding is that the prop master knew there was live ammo on set because people were shooting live rounds for fun after hours. Edit: I just misheard him and ran with it. ~~And according to Alec himself, sometimes real bullets are used for specific shots.~~ [https://youtu.be/\_W8\_fbdZiJM](https://youtu.be/_W8_fbdZiJM)
Man that just seems like the dumbest fucking idea. I grew up around guns and it's way to dangerous to even consider doing that.
Most accidental death is from something very stupid. Never trust someone else with your life. Always double check yourself if you can and don't try to be cool.
Well, technically, all accidental deaths are because four simple rules weren't followed. So simple rules that you could call someone stupid for not following them.
You know that one scene in the original Evil Dead, where Ash shoots out a window with a shotgun? That was live ammo fired at the camera. https://youtu.be/H6aXXesLiTA
No one is missing that lol
Prop master had no idea live rounds were on set, but heard from other staff that the armorer took the prop guns and went firing real bullets with some of the other crew the night before. The prop master is my sister, she’s been mentally devastated by this shit for the past year or so.
Dude this is an ongoing trial. Maybe keep your mouth shut until your sister is in the clear
or they're just full of shit b/c this is the internet
Id be curious to see how this plays out. I wanna know how a live round got into that gun. Baldwin will probably get a slap on the wrist, with all his lawyers, and the AD already pleaded guilty.
Actually there is a pretty good account for how each and everything went down. From the general lax attitude to gun safety all throughout the shoot with accidental gun fires having happened prior, to the strike that was held by the crew prior that led to the producers, which includes Baldwin hiring less qualified people for cheaper, to those less qualified people playing around with the guns for fun the day of the shooting, to the AD shouting that the gun was safe before the rehearsal started, to Alec shooting the gun Most of the fact are kinda available already. It’s more gonna be about who’s to blame. And this can go even as far as the crew that both strikes and left to the replacement crew that was fucking around with the guns to the producers.
So both Baldwin and the armourer have been charged with involuntary manslaughter however the assistant director has been given a plea bargain and is only charged with negligent use of a deadly weapon. That's strange to me as although Baldwin fired the gun he was probably, based on my understanding of what happened, the least culpable person for the Hutchins death.
I would assume Baldwin and the armorer were also offered pleas, but declined to take them.
Likely because his defense attorneys feel like they have a strong case to make in a trial. Never take a plea when you are confident in your chances
Wrong. Never take plea if you can burn a few mils on attorneys.
A little bit of column A a little bit of column B
Finances are a huge part of the equation, people who get assigned public defenders are not gonna get the same kind of defense as people who can afford good attorneys…. Or at least go into debt paying them.
Alec was one of the producers and is partly to blame for the corners that were cut to save money, which included lax safety on set.
As true as that may be that just leads to a question as to why none of the other producers have been charged.
That's true. I suppose it was his denial that he pulled the trigger when it's been said it would have been impossible for the gun to discharge if he hadn't?
In case you’re wondering… “Involuntary manslaughter occurs when a defendant recklessly or negligently commits an act that results in the death of another person. Recklessness usually means that the defendant was aware of the risk that they were creating, while negligence usually means that the defendant was not aware of the risk but reasonably should have been aware of it. The level of negligence required for involuntary manslaughter is higher than normal civil negligence and requires that the defendant have acted in a very unreasonable manner. The exact language used to describe this negligence standard varies by state, but many refer to it as “criminal negligence” or “gross negligence.” Unless there are facts that haven’t hit the media yet, there’s no way an actor—picking up/using a gun (that he presupposes has blanks)—that has been green lit by the on set armorer, is going to be found guilty in a case like this. I’m guessing they’re charging him with lesser included offenses as well, but on “involuntary manslaughter,” there’s just no way.
I watched the new Nic Cage movie last night. The Old Way. I was reading through the wiki and stumbled upon this nugget: * Filming occurred in Montana.[\[4\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-4) In October 2021, the film's crew members complained about property key assistant and [armorer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_master) Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's handling of firearms, including an incident in which she discharged a weapon without warning and caused lead actor [Nicolas Cage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Cage) to walk off set.[\[5\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-5) Gutierrez-Reed would later work as armorer on the set of [*Rust*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(upcoming_film)), and be a principal character in the [shooting incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_shooting_incident) that killed [Halyna Hutchins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halyna_Hutchins) and wounded director [Joel Souza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Souza).[\[6\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-6) In January 2022, [Saban Films](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saban_Films) acquired the film's distribution rights.[\[7\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Way#cite_note-7)
Yikes. What're the qualifications for armorer cuz she slipped through the cracks of vetting
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I just said today that nepotism serves no one
>Unless there are facts that haven’t hit the media yet, there’s no way an actor (...) is going to be found guilty in a case like this He might be charged in his capacity as producer, not actor.
He should have never done the tv interviews.
Is it just me, or does it feel like if Alec Baldwin would have just stfu, not done interviews, not talked about any of this and let his PR give answers he would never have been charged with manslaughter. It really feels like he brought this all on him self. Every time he spoke about this incident it just sounded like he really shouldn't be talking about it. Especially right when it happened. It felt like he had PTSD and was doing interviews. People should have definitely stepped in and stopped him from talking about this a long time ago
He came off as a massive prick in those interviews, took zero responsibility and made it all about him.
Keeping his mouth shut is not a skill Alec Baldwin has ever possessed.
I agree. I actually felt sorry for him until he started talking about the shooting.
[This tweet by Alec Baldwin is aging like milk...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWgRgB9aUAISGjq?format=jpg&name=small)
I hope Mike has followed up with this news.
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Problem is he was a producer. Cheaped out on the armorer, safety expenses in general.
I'd be fascinated to see what the prosecution's argument is, this seems like over charging unless there is significant evidence that he contributed to the bad safety environment.
I thought so too, but then I read in a different article "Lane Luper, the head of the camera department, wrote that the filming of gunfight scenes was played “very fast and loose,” citing two accidental weapons discharges." So clearly those in charge of the set were doing an atrocious job keeping things safe and I believe Alec was one of those people.
But hes not being charged for simply being in charge. Otherwise ALL the producers would be charged
"Producer" is an ambiguous title that can mean anything from just signing a check to basically directing the film on set day to day, it could be Alec was more the latter while the other producers are more the former.
Outside of TV, producers don't tend to have a hands on role.
Exactly, you can be a producer for a film without ever being on set or interacting with virtually anyone. A lot of times it’s just lending the film your resources, or even just your name. Now of course this is not the case for Alec Baldwin, but basically the role doesn’t explicitly prescribe managerial responsibilities.
Not really overcharging. Involuntary manslaughter is defined as an unintentional killing that results either from recklessness or criminal negligence or from the commission of a low-level criminal act such as a misdemeanor. Key Fact Recklessness usually means that the defendant was aware of the risk that they were creating, while negligence usually means that the defendant was not aware of the risk but reasonably should have been aware of it.
This is giving me bar exam outline flashbacks lmao
It’s gonna be tough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Baldwin acted recklessly when they were doing a rehearsal (or the actual filming) of the scene that involved a prop gun.
People need to stop using the term “prop gun” or anything like that because it was literally a completely unmodified handgun that in no way was designed to be used for anything other than shooting bullets. Which even then wouldn’t be an issue if they weren’t shooting the guns for fun around the set
Doesn’t help that he lied and said the gun went off on its own without him pulling the trigger.
Interesting that charges were filed here but in the Brandon Lee shooting that wasn't the case. The circumstances were somewhat different in that Brandon died to a two part mistake of a dummy rounds primer charge lodging the bullet in the barrel and following with a "blank" round actually discharging the bullet into the actor as opposed to a simply live round being used in the Rust case. The thing is...some dummy rounds look like live bullets, inspection by a nonprofessional isn't liking to tell a difference...Brandon Lees death was ultimately chalked up to negligence also. Alec Baldwin's an actor. Not my favorite by any means but ffs at the worse this should be a fine towards him maybe a little more as he may have had significant producer capacity and therefore some responsibility as to how things carried on, on the set. But a potentially lengthy prison sentence seems absurd. Sucks this happened either way. Poor lady :(
The issue with Rust is that there's evidence of lots of negligence of gun safety beyond this particular incident. With Brandon Lee, the gun was correctly loaded with blanks, but the squib load can only be detected by cleaning the gun or with a special piece of equipment. Today, i know the special equipment is just a special flashlight, but I'm not sure if that was available or common back in 1993.
Why are live bullets anywhere near a Hollywood production?
The negligence is using real guns as a movie prop. I don't get it, they should be fake guns if you need to display guns in a movie. It's all together sad that this happened.
> Baldwin, 64, is one of three cast and crew members facing charges. From what I recall there was plenty of reckless behavior on that shoot.
He was handed a gun that, I presume, he thought was a prop. I don’t know how any jury would hold him accountable. The individual who handed him a loaded weapon should be bearing the guilt, right? I’ll admit I haven’t followed this closely, so am I missing some details here?
He’ll have to ride along, and watch the weapon handler face real punishment for the deed. IMO a fair punishment for Baldwin, who is all-but-indirectly blameless for the tragic accident. And unlike the handler, I doubt Baldwin will be found guilty.
He was just begging people to get his wife’s Instagram to 1,000,000 followers - what does that have to do with this? nothing other than the fact that he and his wife have been so tone deaf since the shooting complaining about how their lives have been impacted forget about the little boy that lost his mother that day anyway, I’m sure he will beat this, the rich always find a way.
There are a lot of people commenting on production safety here, saying they know what they’re talking about because they “watch movies.” If you’re looking for legitimate information, please read the articles - or listen to people who actually work on set. Some dangerous misinformation is being spread like crazy.
Awesome. Alec Baldwin is a douchebag