In another interview, Baldwin has said he did not pull the trigger. For the gun users here, how stable is old ammo, and how quickly, if at all, does it degrade?
To some extent I can understand how this happened. It was negligent, but from everything I’ve read, being delivered live rounds mixed in with the dummies is like getting a piranha in your tank of tropical fish.
Generally speaking not quickly at all. Most modern production ammo is made to pretty solid specifications and as long as moisture doesn't enter the main chamber where the powder is or the Primer Pocket, rounds can be stored for quite some time with no degradation in performance. Moisture is the big enemy however, that's why you'll often see older military surplus ammo "lacquered" where some kind of sealant is applied both at the base of the around the primer pocket and near the mouth of the case where the bullet is seated to prevent moisture from getting in there. The downside of course is that this lacquer will rapidly increase fouling in the weapon, so you only really see this on old milsurp ammo and no where else.
It sounds like these were old reloads (they used the term recycled rounds), not production.
Hrm, well usually with reloaded/remanufactured/recycled ammo, the bigger danger is not necessarily the age, but how it was reloaded. I reload myself and the biggest danger with reloads is improperly "charging" the rounds, IE overloading them with powder to the point they can catastrophically detonate when fired, or not loaded enough leading to "squibs" or underpowered loads that can result in misfires or worse, rounds getting stuck in the barrel. As long as the primers were properly seated and the case mouths properly crimped to seat the bullet, they shouldn't degrade any faster/slower than commercially manufactured ammo.
Has anyone mentioned that also with how lax custody over the props appears to have been. That it's also possible some asshole decided to borrow one of the functional prop guns for personal target practice and might have forgotten to remove any ammo they didn't use?
In another interview, Baldwin has said he did not pull the trigger. For the gun users here, how stable is old ammo, and how quickly, if at all, does it degrade?
To some extent I can understand how this happened. It was negligent, but from everything I’ve read, being delivered live rounds mixed in with the dummies is like getting a piranha in your tank of tropical fish.
Degraded ammo isn't like nitroglycerin; it doesn't get more sensitive, it just gets less powerful.
If you're using '65 steel case Turkish surplus, the failure mode is usually a magazine jamming or a failure to fire. A spontaneous detonation is so vanishingly unlikely I'd feel comfortable calling it impossible.
Edit: Yeah it seems more likely that he thumbed the hammer back but not enough for it to catch and then it fired after falling forward. That also shouldn't really happen with modern firearms but I don't know if they were using genuine SAAs or something.
I didn’t watch the interview, but apparently Baldwin did confirm that the shot ended with him drawing and cocking the hammer, so the speculation that the round was fired by a partial cocking seems likely.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
Baldwin comes off looking unfortunate but not malicious, but both the AD who already took the deal and the armorer are mentioned in emails and texts before as being walking accidents wait to happen
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Sounds like the right charge. A whole lot of negligence surrounded this.
Holding Baldwin The Actor responsible is stupid. As it stands, it seems like they're trying to also file for it as Baldwin the Producer.
If they convicted Baldwin The Actor, then that's got pretty wide-ranging ramifications for Hollywood production where the guarantee is meant to be that there's a system enabling you to do these things safely that you frequently have no choice but to trust.
I skimmed through the sheriff's report, and I'm not sure why they would be charging Baldwin. The armorer is going to have trouble, though.
I think the issue here is they offered the AD a deal only to realize that he was part of the problem (hence why he was happy to take it.) So there's an element of professional embarassment.
“He had a duty as an actor to check that gun check those projectiles or have them checked in front of him,” Mary Carmack-Altweis, the Santa Fe County District Attorney said. “He had a duty as an actor to not point a gun at someone and certainly not to pull the trigger.”
Baldwin has previously stated he never pulled the trigger on the gun.
“The trigger wasn't pulled. I didn't pull the trigger," Baldwin said.
Carmack-Altweis disagrees with that statement.
“He's the one that had the gun and pulled the trigger,” she said Thursday.
The D.A. said a forensic report from the FBI said Baldwin pulled the trigger, making him responsible for the tragedy.
“We were waiting on that FBI report to show us if that gun was a fully functional gun or not. And what it showed us was that it was a fully functional gun, and it did not misfire. It would not misfire. The trigger had to have been pulled. So, Alec is wrong,” Carmack-Altweis said.
A "a duty as an actor to not point a gun at someone" is the sort of legal position that can make a lot of people nervous. Like, if I whip out my hypothetical gun that I thought was unloaded, pull the trigger, and somebody dies, that's probably involuntary manslaughter, but I'm not sure that's a useful standard to apply inside a film set. I'd prefer a more OSHA-style approach, where we treat it like if someone was killed in a workplace accident; the involuntary manslaughter charge goes up the chain of command until it hits the person that fails to pin it on their boss.
On the other hand, much of this is already best practices, so this might just add an extra layer of legal consequences to not following those best practices.
On the other other hand, the background mook who gets three shots off and then dies apparently now has a duty as an actor to check the ammo in the gun they're given to make sure they're firing blanks, and I'm not sure that actor has the pull needed to delay things just to double-check the ammo.
On a practical level, putting all responsibility on the armorer puts it in the hands of a competent professional who (should) know what they're doing, and filming deaths from guns are uncommon enough that I don't see a particular need for actors to have legal liability as well.
I cock the gun. I go, 'Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?' And then I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off.
Which creates a reasonable answer to why the gun fired when it did: the hammer of the gun swinging forward causing it to fire is kind of just how revolvers work; it just requires that he have the trigger depressed while he pulls the hammer back, which is easy to do without thinking thanks to the forces involved. Also, letting go of the hammer while your gun is pointed at someone might actually create some legal liability for an actor in a way normal gun handling might not.
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“He had a duty as an actor to check that gun check those projectiles or have them checked in front of him,” Mary Carmack-Altweis, the Santa Fe County District Attorney said. “He had a duty as an actor to not point a gun at someone and certainly not to pull the trigger.”
Baldwin has previously stated he never pulled the trigger on the gun.
“The trigger wasn't pulled. I didn't pull the trigger," Baldwin said.
Carmack-Altweis disagrees with that statement.
“He's the one that had the gun and pulled the trigger,” she said Thursday.
The D.A. said a forensic report from the FBI said Baldwin pulled the trigger, making him responsible for the tragedy.
“We were waiting on that FBI report to show us if that gun was a fully functional gun or not. And what it showed us was that it was a fully functional gun, and it did not misfire. It would not misfire. The trigger had to have been pulled. So, Alec is wrong,” Carmack-Altweis said.
A "a duty as an actor to not point a gun at someone" is the sort of legal position that can make a lot of people nervous. Like, if I whip out my hypothetical gun that I thought was unloaded, pull the trigger, and somebody dies, that's probably involuntary manslaughter, but I'm not sure that's a useful standard to apply inside a film set. I'd prefer a more OSHA-style approach, where we treat it like if someone was killed in a workplace accident; the involuntary manslaughter charge goes up the chain of command until it hits the person that fails to pin it on their boss.
On the other hand, much of this is already best practices, so this might just add an extra layer of legal consequences to not following those best practices.
On the other other hand, the background mook who gets three shots off and then dies apparently now has a duty as an actor to check the ammo in the gun they're given to make sure they're firing blanks, and I'm not sure that actor has the pull needed to delay things just to double-check the ammo.
On a practical level, putting all responsibility on the armorer puts it in the hands of a competent professional who (should) know what they're doing, and filming deaths from guns are uncommon enough that I don't see a particular need for actors to have legal liability as well.
My impression is that it's pretty difficult to visually tell the difference between a blank round and a live one.
My other impression is that fucking around with a prop gun is something that would piss off the armorer, because each shot is blocked and planned, with only the specific shots loaded etc.
I cock the gun. I go, 'Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?' And then I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off.
Which creates a reasonable answer to why the gun fired when it did: the hammer of the gun swinging forward causing it to fire is kind of just how revolvers work; it just requires that he have the trigger depressed while he pulls the hammer back, which is easy to do without thinking thanks to the forces involved. Also, letting go of the hammer while your gun is pointed at someone might actually create some legal liability for an actor in a way normal gun handling might not.
I can't possibly see how, because again: the gun was not meant to contain live ammunition at all. The issue under contention is "would Baldwin have manipulated the firearm the way he had if he was not assured by the process that it was not loaded?" and the answer is fairly obviously no: under the Hollywood process for movies, the gun was meant to be absolutely safe.
It would be different if it was meant to contain a blank and he was dangerously close to someone, but that wasn't the case at all - in fact it's a detail I'm not clear on here, which is whether this was an action shot at all or just a shot of him drawing and pulling the hammer back (which it seems like it probably was, since otherwise it wouldn't have been expected to be a cold gun and there'd be no need for the expectation that it was loaded with dummy rounds)
Every interpretation of this case seems to get stuck on the idea that a prop gun on a movie set is identical in handling to a gun in every other situation, and it's just plain not the case: you can't clear a gun on set, particularly a revolver loaded with dummy rounds, because they look indistinguishable to live rounds unless you specifically know what to look for (they might feel differently weighted, but you can't stake a life on that), and common practice if it's actually a firing set is to load a blank in the barrel and then dummy rounds in the other chambers.
I skimmed through the sheriff's report, and I'm not sure why they would be charging Baldwin. The armorer is going to have trouble, though.
I think the issue here is they offered the AD a deal only to realize that he was part of the problem (hence why he was happy to take it.) So there's an element of professional embarassment.
This is kinda where I land.
I have no love for Alec Baldwin after his (hopefully) drunken rant at his daughter but this kinda reeks of a prosecutor trying to save face and/or build a rep.
It does seem odd to expect Baldwin as an actor to have the skills and responsibility to check the gun before filming, that is literally the primary role of the armourer. They're the professionals, thats what they're there for.
In general the charges seem surprisingly fair. While it's not Baldwin's job to check the guns he does bear responsibility for having the gun pointed at a person in the first place. He wasn't filming a scene, she was off camera, there was no reason for that gun to be pointed at her. That's on him.
The armourer absolutely deserves to be eating that charge though because she just totally failed at every level of her job to allow this accident to even be possible. There's an argument Baldwin the producer and the AD probably thought they were too important to follow rules but if that was the case any armourer that knew what they were doing would have packed up their shit and walked away for precisely this reason. The most basic part of her job was to be standing between those guns and the actors, they shouldn't have ended up in an actor's hands without being checked by her, they should never have been accesable to anyone else without her knowledge. She failed at the most basic element of her important and dangerous job and someone died. Involentary manslaughter seems absolutely appropriate.
It is absolutely not the duty of the actor to inspect weapons used in their scenes because actors aren't armourers. These prosecutors don't feel like they need to charge Baldwin, they *want* to charge Baldwin.
It is absolutely not the duty of the actor to inspect weapons used in their scenes because actors aren't armourers. These prosecutors don't feel like they need to charge Baldwin, they *want* to charge Baldwin.
Which seems odd because there's plenty of scope for coming after him as a producer. I don't doubt that him and the AD walked all over their young and inexperienced armourer and directly caused the unsafe working environment that led to the accident. That still doesn't absolve the armourer of any responsibility for allowing it to happen though.
It is absolutely not the duty of the actor to inspect weapons used in their scenes because actors aren't armourers. These prosecutors don't feel like they need to charge Baldwin, they *want* to charge Baldwin.
Which seems odd because there's plenty of scope for coming after him as a producer. I don't doubt that him and the AD walked all over their young and inexperienced armourer and directly caused the unsafe working environment that led to the accident. That still doesn't absolve the armourer of any responsibility for allowing it to happen though.
He's not the only producer. If they were going to hold "the producers" responsible they'd have to be charging a whole lot of people and that wouldn't hold water either.
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
It is absolutely not the duty of the actor to inspect weapons used in their scenes because actors aren't armourers. These prosecutors don't feel like they need to charge Baldwin, they *want* to charge Baldwin.
Which seems odd because there's plenty of scope for coming after him as a producer. I don't doubt that him and the AD walked all over their young and inexperienced armourer and directly caused the unsafe working environment that led to the accident. That still doesn't absolve the armourer of any responsibility for allowing it to happen though.
He's not the only producer. If they were going to hold "the producers" responsible they'd have to be charging a whole lot of people and that wouldn't hold water either.
I was going to mention this
Sarah Zachry is the props master and apparently had hiring/firing authority over the charged armorer, Gutierrez-Reed, and there's a bunch of texts/e-mails about Gutierrez-Reed missing duties, and someone's like well if it gets bad enough you'll need to cut her loose. Also texts from Gutierrez-Reed's phone about Sarah being her boss and considering dismissing her.
The charge against Baldwin appears based on the fact that 1. the scene didn't call for pulling the trigger, 2. even if it had SOP is you still don't point it right at them and correct for it with camera framing. The DA mentions inspection duties in her speech but none of the other producers are getting dinged. (I don't agree with this, but that's what they've said.)
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
It is absolutely not the duty of the actor to inspect weapons used in their scenes because actors aren't armourers. These prosecutors don't feel like they need to charge Baldwin, they *want* to charge Baldwin.
Which seems odd because there's plenty of scope for coming after him as a producer. I don't doubt that him and the AD walked all over their young and inexperienced armourer and directly caused the unsafe working environment that led to the accident. That still doesn't absolve the armourer of any responsibility for allowing it to happen though.
He's not the only producer. If they were going to hold "the producers" responsible they'd have to be charging a whole lot of people and that wouldn't hold water either.
I was going to mention this
Sarah Zachry is the props master and apparently had hiring/firing authority over the charged armorer, Gutierrez-Reed, and there's a bunch of texts/e-mails about Gutierrez-Reed missing duties, and someone's like well if it gets bad enough you'll need to cut her loose
The charge against Baldwin appears based on the fact that 1. the scene didn't call for pulling the trigger, 2. even if it had you don't actually aim the gun right at someone. The DA mentions inspection duties in her speech but none of the other producers are getting dinged.
The whole 'you don't aim a gun at a person' is... interesting, considering that pointing guns at people is kind of a major thing in a lot of movies. Baldwin might be in trouble just because the jury might buy that pointing guns at people is bad, and completely ignore the fact that there's that whole armorer and best practices thereof that's designed to keep absolute control over the weaponry so they can do things that would otherwise be stupid and/or dangerous.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
edited January 2023
Dave Halls' phone messages (Page 211) and Seth Kenney (Page 218) are worth reading, too.
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Yeah, it's super weird to charge Baldwin as the actor instead of Baldwin as the producer.
From the perspective of him as an actor, Baldwin was doing his job and an equipment failure that should not and could not have happened if other people responsible for that equipment had done their job resulted in a tragic accident. His responsibilities as an actor are explicitly different than the roles of the armorer who is responsible for that equipment and other people on the set who are responsible for making sure the armorer is doing their job and are (potentially) part of that chain of custody.
This is like...I dunno, charging the guy holding the Stop sign on a road crew because a driver ignored the sign and killed someone filling potholes. If you applied this precedent to every other workplace accident it gets bad real fast.
On the other hand, had they charged Baldwin as the producer for cutting corners, allowing unsafe practices on his set, and hiring an unqualified armorer there might be a case. It would be weak, but I could get behind that on the same lines as a negligent business owner who ignores safety hazards and warning signs in their factory. Of course that would necessitate charging the other producers who were also responsible for death, which isn't being done.
This whole situation is somewhat baffling if you approach it from any perspective of justice being done. There's no apparent reason Baldwin (the actor) should bear criminal responsibility for this shooting, nor is there an apparent reason Baldwin should be singled out along with the armorer as the sole people criminally responsible for this shooting.
It is absolutely not the duty of the actor to inspect weapons used in their scenes because actors aren't armourers. These prosecutors don't feel like they need to charge Baldwin, they *want* to charge Baldwin.
The right has been absolutely cacking themselves over this. It's being viewed as an awesome take down of someone who holds opposing political views to them, and particularly someone who has called for gun control publicly previously.
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
Given how the entire crux of the case here seems to be that important safety procedures were ignored because the people in charge of the production couldn't be challenged I think there is scope for going after the producers. If Baldwin was just an actor collecting a cheque here I'd have a lot of sympathy for him but the fact he was wearing so many hats and had so much power meant he wasn't being told "these are the rules for firearms they exist for a reason you have to follow them".
This was an unsafe workplace because procedures weren't followed. The responsibility for that ultimately rests with the people in charge. It doesn't feel at all unreasonable that there should be some kind of change out on them. Having the top jobs doesn't just mean more money and prestige, there's responsibility that comes with it, anyone who isn't up to shouldering that shouldn't take the job.
Given how the entire crux of the case here seems to be that important safety procedures were ignored because the people in charge of the production couldn't be challenged I think there is scope for going after the producers. If Baldwin was just an actor collecting a cheque here I'd have a lot of sympathy for him but the fact he was wearing so many hats and had so much power meant he wasn't being told "these are the rules for firearms they exist for a reason you have to follow them".
This was an unsafe workplace because procedures weren't followed. The responsibility for that ultimately rests with the people in charge. It doesn't feel at all unreasonable that there should be some kind of change out on them. Having the top jobs doesn't just mean more money and prestige, there's responsibility that comes with it, anyone who isn't up to shouldering that shouldn't take the job.
You'd have to go beyond targeting them just because they have the word Producer next to their name. There were multiple Producers and there would need to be an actual breakdown of their responsibilities, what kind of "producer" they are, and so forth.
Being labeled as a producer on a film can mean functionally nothing and pointing a finger at someone based solely on that is just as blindly dumb as wanting a minimum of 5 years for an actor because you invented a responsibility for them that they don't actually have.
It falls into "just making an example out of people" which is the kind of overreach we have here already.
Dave Halls' phone messages (Page 211) and Seth Kenney (Page 218) are worth reading, too.
The scene processing stuff around page 142 is also super telling.
Unlabeled ammo boxes, boxes labels for one caliber with rounds for a different caliber mixed in, some stuff has color markings on it other stuff doesn't, some dummies have bbs others have holes drilled into them some have both. Also the armorer was also keeping rounds loose in a fanny pack. Like everything but "This is the bucket of bullets, just grab a handful and stick em in the gun"
There is also one of the officer statements that claims one of the rifles they took had a wrong caliber round loaded into it that jammed the gun when they were trying to cycle the rounds out of it.
It makes me madder that the AD got to plea out. Of anyone on that set he probably was the most responsible. He had no business handling the gun or declaring it safe
and as AD he should've been the one to shut things down when they were obviously not safe.
It makes me madder that the AD got to plea out. Of anyone on that set he probably was the most responsible. He had no business handling the gun or declaring it safe
and as AD he should've been the one to shut things down when they were obviously not safe.
My brother-in-law is an AD, and he's said the exact same thing. He didn't know about the COVID restrictions used to keep the armorer off set, so he couldn't understand why an AD would even have been involved.
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
In general the charges seem surprisingly fair. While it's not Baldwin's job to check the guns he does bear responsibility for having the gun pointed at a person in the first place. He wasn't filming a scene, she was off camera, there was no reason for that gun to be pointed at her. That's on him.
That may not actually be possible for a reasonable understanding of “at”. Depending on where the cameras are and where the actor need to stand for the shot they’re testing there are potentially going to be people down the muzzle by necessity. Certainly in a way the actor cannot control and still achieve the shot that was intended. It also may not be possible for the actor to specifically determine where the gun is pointed. In a draw scene the actor will not be looking down the muzzle as an example. The barrel will be pointed at any number of places in a wide angle during that action and as the actor holds the weapon because that is what happens when you hold a weapon in a general direction and aren’t looking down the barrel. So having no people potentially in the firing line of the weapon would potentially require no people anywhere in front of set or behind the camera. Which is not feasible. People need to operate the cameras and lighting and hold the boom mikes and…
The DA is saying Baldwin pulled the trigger. Baldwin is saying he didn’t. That seems to be the hinge of it but I am not even sure I would convict on that alone anyway given that it’s neither the actors responsibility to determine a weapon safe nor it is possible to know exactly where the barrel is pointing at all times while performing acting duties or may it be possible to not aim the barrel at a person while performing duties.
I said it two years ago and I'll say it again today: Why in the fuck was their live ammunition on set?
Gutierrez-Reed was a nepotism hire, the daughter of another armorer, and who got told off by her licensee (the actual license being held by someone else) in emails / texts they recovered for being insane about this
She was asking him for live ammo and he was like wtf no , "that always ends in heartbreak"
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Hrm, well usually with reloaded/remanufactured/recycled ammo, the bigger danger is not necessarily the age, but how it was reloaded. I reload myself and the biggest danger with reloads is improperly "charging" the rounds, IE overloading them with powder to the point they can catastrophically detonate when fired, or not loaded enough leading to "squibs" or underpowered loads that can result in misfires or worse, rounds getting stuck in the barrel. As long as the primers were properly seated and the case mouths properly crimped to seat the bullet, they shouldn't degrade any faster/slower than commercially manufactured ammo.
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Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Degraded ammo isn't like nitroglycerin; it doesn't get more sensitive, it just gets less powerful.
If you're using '65 steel case Turkish surplus, the failure mode is usually a magazine jamming or a failure to fire. A spontaneous detonation is so vanishingly unlikely I'd feel comfortable calling it impossible.
Edit: Yeah it seems more likely that he thumbed the hammer back but not enough for it to catch and then it fired after falling forward. That also shouldn't really happen with modern firearms but I don't know if they were using genuine SAAs or something.
I didn’t watch the interview, but apparently Baldwin did confirm that the shot ended with him drawing and cocking the hammer, so the speculation that the round was fired by a partial cocking seems likely.
- John Stuart Mill
I'm really surprised that the DA actually brought charges against him (not that there wasn't every reason to).
Full sheriff's report available here: https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Binder_Rust-Case_Digital-of-Hardcopy-Sheets_optimized_Redacted.pdf
Baldwin comes off looking unfortunate but not malicious, but both the AD who already took the deal and the armorer are mentioned in emails and texts before as being walking accidents wait to happen
Holding Baldwin The Actor responsible is stupid. As it stands, it seems like they're trying to also file for it as Baldwin the Producer.
If they convicted Baldwin The Actor, then that's got pretty wide-ranging ramifications for Hollywood production where the guarantee is meant to be that there's a system enabling you to do these things safely that you frequently have no choice but to trust.
Then they should charge the other 5 or 6 producers.
They’re trying to add in extra considerations that would require a minimum sentence of 5 years which to me seems like overreach.
I think the issue here is they offered the AD a deal only to realize that he was part of the problem (hence why he was happy to take it.) So there's an element of professional embarassment.
https://www.koat.com/article/breakdown-alec-baldwin-s-public-comments-rust/42582574 A "a duty as an actor to not point a gun at someone" is the sort of legal position that can make a lot of people nervous. Like, if I whip out my hypothetical gun that I thought was unloaded, pull the trigger, and somebody dies, that's probably involuntary manslaughter, but I'm not sure that's a useful standard to apply inside a film set. I'd prefer a more OSHA-style approach, where we treat it like if someone was killed in a workplace accident; the involuntary manslaughter charge goes up the chain of command until it hits the person that fails to pin it on their boss.
On the other hand, much of this is already best practices, so this might just add an extra layer of legal consequences to not following those best practices.
On the other other hand, the background mook who gets three shots off and then dies apparently now has a duty as an actor to check the ammo in the gun they're given to make sure they're firing blanks, and I'm not sure that actor has the pull needed to delay things just to double-check the ammo.
On a practical level, putting all responsibility on the armorer puts it in the hands of a competent professional who (should) know what they're doing, and filming deaths from guns are uncommon enough that I don't see a particular need for actors to have legal liability as well.
It was a modern Pietta reproduction of a SAA.
Yeah, single action, apparently. Some Googling turned up a good technical analysis:
https://thereload.com/analysis-yes-alec-baldwins-gun-could-have-fired-without-him-pulling-the-trigger/
(While there isn't anything Yikes on this page, it is a gun blog that I haven't vetted.)
It also includes another statement from Baldwin: Which creates a reasonable answer to why the gun fired when it did: the hammer of the gun swinging forward causing it to fire is kind of just how revolvers work; it just requires that he have the trigger depressed while he pulls the hammer back, which is easy to do without thinking thanks to the forces involved. Also, letting go of the hammer while your gun is pointed at someone might actually create some legal liability for an actor in a way normal gun handling might not.
My impression is that it's pretty difficult to visually tell the difference between a blank round and a live one.
My other impression is that fucking around with a prop gun is something that would piss off the armorer, because each shot is blocked and planned, with only the specific shots loaded etc.
I can't possibly see how, because again: the gun was not meant to contain live ammunition at all. The issue under contention is "would Baldwin have manipulated the firearm the way he had if he was not assured by the process that it was not loaded?" and the answer is fairly obviously no: under the Hollywood process for movies, the gun was meant to be absolutely safe.
It would be different if it was meant to contain a blank and he was dangerously close to someone, but that wasn't the case at all - in fact it's a detail I'm not clear on here, which is whether this was an action shot at all or just a shot of him drawing and pulling the hammer back (which it seems like it probably was, since otherwise it wouldn't have been expected to be a cold gun and there'd be no need for the expectation that it was loaded with dummy rounds)
Every interpretation of this case seems to get stuck on the idea that a prop gun on a movie set is identical in handling to a gun in every other situation, and it's just plain not the case: you can't clear a gun on set, particularly a revolver loaded with dummy rounds, because they look indistinguishable to live rounds unless you specifically know what to look for (they might feel differently weighted, but you can't stake a life on that), and common practice if it's actually a firing set is to load a blank in the barrel and then dummy rounds in the other chambers.
This is kinda where I land.
I have no love for Alec Baldwin after his (hopefully) drunken rant at his daughter but this kinda reeks of a prosecutor trying to save face and/or build a rep.
In general the charges seem surprisingly fair. While it's not Baldwin's job to check the guns he does bear responsibility for having the gun pointed at a person in the first place. He wasn't filming a scene, she was off camera, there was no reason for that gun to be pointed at her. That's on him.
The armourer absolutely deserves to be eating that charge though because she just totally failed at every level of her job to allow this accident to even be possible. There's an argument Baldwin the producer and the AD probably thought they were too important to follow rules but if that was the case any armourer that knew what they were doing would have packed up their shit and walked away for precisely this reason. The most basic part of her job was to be standing between those guns and the actors, they shouldn't have ended up in an actor's hands without being checked by her, they should never have been accesable to anyone else without her knowledge. She failed at the most basic element of her important and dangerous job and someone died. Involentary manslaughter seems absolutely appropriate.
Which seems odd because there's plenty of scope for coming after him as a producer. I don't doubt that him and the AD walked all over their young and inexperienced armourer and directly caused the unsafe working environment that led to the accident. That still doesn't absolve the armourer of any responsibility for allowing it to happen though.
He's not the only producer. If they were going to hold "the producers" responsible they'd have to be charging a whole lot of people and that wouldn't hold water either.
I was going to mention this
Sarah Zachry is the props master and apparently had hiring/firing authority over the charged armorer, Gutierrez-Reed, and there's a bunch of texts/e-mails about Gutierrez-Reed missing duties, and someone's like well if it gets bad enough you'll need to cut her loose. Also texts from Gutierrez-Reed's phone about Sarah being her boss and considering dismissing her.
The charge against Baldwin appears based on the fact that 1. the scene didn't call for pulling the trigger, 2. even if it had SOP is you still don't point it right at them and correct for it with camera framing. The DA mentions inspection duties in her speech but none of the other producers are getting dinged. (I don't agree with this, but that's what they've said.)
The whole 'you don't aim a gun at a person' is... interesting, considering that pointing guns at people is kind of a major thing in a lot of movies. Baldwin might be in trouble just because the jury might buy that pointing guns at people is bad, and completely ignore the fact that there's that whole armorer and best practices thereof that's designed to keep absolute control over the weaponry so they can do things that would otherwise be stupid and/or dangerous.
From the perspective of him as an actor, Baldwin was doing his job and an equipment failure that should not and could not have happened if other people responsible for that equipment had done their job resulted in a tragic accident. His responsibilities as an actor are explicitly different than the roles of the armorer who is responsible for that equipment and other people on the set who are responsible for making sure the armorer is doing their job and are (potentially) part of that chain of custody.
This is like...I dunno, charging the guy holding the Stop sign on a road crew because a driver ignored the sign and killed someone filling potholes. If you applied this precedent to every other workplace accident it gets bad real fast.
On the other hand, had they charged Baldwin as the producer for cutting corners, allowing unsafe practices on his set, and hiring an unqualified armorer there might be a case. It would be weak, but I could get behind that on the same lines as a negligent business owner who ignores safety hazards and warning signs in their factory. Of course that would necessitate charging the other producers who were also responsible for death, which isn't being done.
This whole situation is somewhat baffling if you approach it from any perspective of justice being done. There's no apparent reason Baldwin (the actor) should bear criminal responsibility for this shooting, nor is there an apparent reason Baldwin should be singled out along with the armorer as the sole people criminally responsible for this shooting.
The right has been absolutely cacking themselves over this. It's being viewed as an awesome take down of someone who holds opposing political views to them, and particularly someone who has called for gun control publicly previously.
https://ballotpedia.org/Mary_Carmack-Altwies
Mike Nifong was a Dem too.
This was an unsafe workplace because procedures weren't followed. The responsibility for that ultimately rests with the people in charge. It doesn't feel at all unreasonable that there should be some kind of change out on them. Having the top jobs doesn't just mean more money and prestige, there's responsibility that comes with it, anyone who isn't up to shouldering that shouldn't take the job.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I'm just saying overcharging concerns appear to sit in the "making a name" side of the wheelhouse and not the "Republican schadenfraude"
You'd have to go beyond targeting them just because they have the word Producer next to their name. There were multiple Producers and there would need to be an actual breakdown of their responsibilities, what kind of "producer" they are, and so forth.
Being labeled as a producer on a film can mean functionally nothing and pointing a finger at someone based solely on that is just as blindly dumb as wanting a minimum of 5 years for an actor because you invented a responsibility for them that they don't actually have.
It falls into "just making an example out of people" which is the kind of overreach we have here already.
The scene processing stuff around page 142 is also super telling.
Unlabeled ammo boxes, boxes labels for one caliber with rounds for a different caliber mixed in, some stuff has color markings on it other stuff doesn't, some dummies have bbs others have holes drilled into them some have both. Also the armorer was also keeping rounds loose in a fanny pack. Like everything but "This is the bucket of bullets, just grab a handful and stick em in the gun"
There is also one of the officer statements that claims one of the rifles they took had a wrong caliber round loaded into it that jammed the gun when they were trying to cycle the rounds out of it.
and as AD he should've been the one to shut things down when they were obviously not safe.
My brother-in-law is an AD, and he's said the exact same thing. He didn't know about the COVID restrictions used to keep the armorer off set, so he couldn't understand why an AD would even have been involved.
- John Stuart Mill
That may not actually be possible for a reasonable understanding of “at”. Depending on where the cameras are and where the actor need to stand for the shot they’re testing there are potentially going to be people down the muzzle by necessity. Certainly in a way the actor cannot control and still achieve the shot that was intended. It also may not be possible for the actor to specifically determine where the gun is pointed. In a draw scene the actor will not be looking down the muzzle as an example. The barrel will be pointed at any number of places in a wide angle during that action and as the actor holds the weapon because that is what happens when you hold a weapon in a general direction and aren’t looking down the barrel. So having no people potentially in the firing line of the weapon would potentially require no people anywhere in front of set or behind the camera. Which is not feasible. People need to operate the cameras and lighting and hold the boom mikes and…
The DA is saying Baldwin pulled the trigger. Baldwin is saying he didn’t. That seems to be the hinge of it but I am not even sure I would convict on that alone anyway given that it’s neither the actors responsibility to determine a weapon safe nor it is possible to know exactly where the barrel is pointing at all times while performing acting duties or may it be possible to not aim the barrel at a person while performing duties.
Gutierrez-Reed was a nepotism hire, the daughter of another armorer, and who got told off by her licensee (the actual license being held by someone else) in emails / texts they recovered for being insane about this
She was asking him for live ammo and he was like wtf no , "that always ends in heartbreak"