Alec Baldwin and the prop gun
Alec Baldwin has been a vociferous advocate of stricter gun control, but yesterday he fired a prop gun on a movie set, unintentionally killing the cinematographer and seriously injuring the director.
I’ve read quite a few opinion pieces that assume he was handling the prop gun negligently and may have been joking around. That should never be done with a firearm even if it’s only a prop.
But we don’t actually know the circumstances under which the gun was discharged. Was it part of filming a scene, or rehearsing for a scene? If so, and Baldwin was following the usual protocol, then I don’t see that he has any culpability. If he really was fooling around, that is a completely different story, even if there was contributory negligence on the part of the prop people who prepared the gun.
There have been deaths on movie sets as a result of the firing of prop guns before. The most famous was that of Brandon Lee. You can read the details here. In that case, a scene was being filmed and a prop gun had been prepared (by the crew, not the actor) in an inadvertently dangerous manner. There was also the death of Jon-Eric Hexum, who jokingly pointed a prop gun at his head, pulled the trigger, and was killed by a blank fired at such close range.
It seems to me that respect for the potential destructive power of even prop guns should be drilled into the heads of all actors and crew members on a set, and they should get serious training about this. That’s particularly true if someone isn’t familiar with firearms in the real world. Even with such training, accidents will happen if the gun isn’t prepared properly, as in the death of Brandon Lee.
I assume more facts will come out about Baldwin in due order.
RIP.
ADDENDUM: I just read a report that the gun had one live round loaded into it. That sounds like an error by the prop people. But if that’s true, what would live rounds be doing on the set?
I’ve read that proper firearms management on set REQUIRES that no live rounds of any kind be present … If true, we’ll learn more soon.
It was also taught that you should never point a gun at anyone, much less pull the trigger, even if you were confident that the gun was not loaded. Following that rule would have been a good idea, whether this was a rehearsal or something else. (The corollary to that rule was that you should never point a gun at someone unless you were prepared to shoot them.)
It’s kind of a puzzle. Somebody broke a firm rule and brought the live round, then loaded it into a weapon which was going to be used as if it carried blanks.
You might have the live round in your pants from your last trip to the range, but loading it into a weapon on a set….
However, there is energy even in a blank–See Hexum–and maybe it blasted something else down range.
There is absolutely NO WAY to confuse a blank with a live round. They look, feel and weigh completely different. Nor is there any way live rounds would be stored adjacent or in the same box with blanks – that’d be like storing strychnine in your medicine cabinet.
Not blaming Baldwin (yet) but there’s no innocent explanation for this.
So it is now official,
I who have carried a gun for years and aim for an armed and educated populous. Have a body count of exactly zero.
Alec Baldwin who advocates for the banning of guns and is uneducated about them. Has a body count of at least one…maybe 2. That we know of.
It is quite illuminating to realize that we are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. And he shows you exactly why.
omebody broke a firm rule and brought the live round, then loaded it into a weapon which was going to be used as if it carried blanks.
Has it been confirmed that it was indeed a live round? All I’m aware of is that a prop gun was used, which I assuse would normally use blanks. And it’s my understanding that even blanks have the potential to kill at close range since material can still be ejected at dangerous velocities.
The union of cinematographers has reported that a live round was involved. That sounds like a true statement. Baldwin, of all people, should have been kept away from any gun.
WIlson H Carroll:
Prop crews load the guns, and I don’t think anyone has suggested that Baldwin did in this case.
Ace is saying that Baldwin is the producer of the film. Respondeat superior.
I can’t see any reason in this day and age to have ANY real firearms on set. Even scenes that require firing blanks should use simulated or altered arms that can ONLY fire blanks. All others should be inert. It should be impossible to load live ammo in a gun used as a prop. Prop M2 (Ma Deuce) machine guns for example use propane to simulate the muzzle flash.
Edit: CGI is so good these days there is no real need to fire blanks either.
People say “prop gun” like that’s not a real firearm, and that may be the case for some of them, but some “prop guns” are functioning firearms and if they have a bullet in them they are “real” guns.
CGI is so good these days there is no real need to fire blanks either.
Yeah, they could just use completely nonfunctional dummy guns and add in sound and muzzle flash later. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the fall out from this incident may be that SAG or whomever will require that all firearms in movies and shows are only to be represented digitally henceforth.
Some are guessing that they wanted a realistic bang, flash and gun-kick for filming the shot but then also have another take in which they used a blank to shoot at the person.
It got mixed up (everyone in Hollywood is drunk, on drugs and full of psychological problems, etc so this stuff happens).
AlecB now has killed more people than tens of millions of legal US gun owners put together.
FYI
Two people can be shot with one discharge as the bullet can pass from one person into another. Modern defensive handgun ammo is designed to limit this occurring but many common bullet designs, such as FMJ, don’t and will go completely through one person.
It was a low budget period film. No doubt specialized ultra-safe Glock 19 prop guns are available. But an authentic looking revolver from the 1880’s is probably easiest obtained from a gun collector.
In the case of Brandon Lee, there was some shot required where the camera can see the noses of the bullets in the revolver chambers. And the idiots in charge only removed the powder and not the primers leading to a squib round lodged in the barrel.
It’s an older film now, but I read that with the original Die Hard, the director ordered extra powerful blanks with more pyrotechnic sparkles. Then the problem was that some of the actors and most of the crew had to wear hearing protection. Also the actors developed a flinch response that they struggled to suppress.
Neo –
Sorry if it sounded like I was saying Baldwin loaded the gun. The article you attached clearly stated someone on the crew loaded it. My point is there’s no innocent explanation for someone on the crew loading a live round into the gun.
The union, which had no members on the call sheet, is claiming it was a live round. How they know this is unexplained.
Come on man, how many high budget action flicks have we seen with no kick or muzzle rise from the gun?
There is absolutely no reason to have real bullets anywhere near a film set.
Baldwin is even dumber than I thought.
The propellant in a ‘blank’ round burns just like the propellant in a ‘live’ round. The gas produced is under very high pressure and has only the muzzle of the firearm from which to escape. I’ve seen a ‘blank’ blow a gallon can inside out. ‘Blanks’ can kill you.
Baldwin is a fool.
W.H. Carroll is correct.
There is no way that a blank round could be mistaken for ball ammo. There are no bullets in typical blanks.
In the rare case where a front facing [victim point of view] image of a pointed revolver needed to show that bullet noses were visible in the chambers, plastic gallery rounds with the powder and even primers removed could be used … or just bullets pulled from cartridges and then seated to show in the cylinder bores, If the prop people had any sense. Scene splicing and editing could do the rest if loading and pointing and firing needed to be captured.
The implication, given who was killed, is that the gun might have been pointing at the camera.
If not, the situation is even worse than I am imagining.
Anti gun activists are known to be ignorant of guns.
I recall a reporter covering BLM riots, perhaps in Missouri. He sent a photo of plastic foam ear protectors lying on the ground (cheap protection from ear damage due to gun noise, used at the range if you haven’t got an expensive set of headgear).
He asked if they were the “rubber bullets” he had heard about in news stories.
Dwaz – I suspect that the union is calling it a live round because there were no union armorers onsite at the time.
And, as noted in many comments, any shell casing with a primer and gun powder is a “live” round. Distance from the object and the presence of a bullet, pellets, or a paper wad just determines how deadly is the round.
I see that TommyJay already addressed the revolver issue.
I admit that nothing appears more ridiculous in some old movies than when a gunman points a revolving cylinder pistol at a victim and it is obvious that there is nothing in the cylinder.
But that can easily be faked.
It remains to be seen just what kind of firearm it actually was.
I hope we get a truthful account of the facts of this shooting, at this point I am going to hold off on the speculation and that’s hard for me to do because I love to speculate. What a sad day for everyone connected to this shooting.
Neo: “I’ve read quite a few opinion pieces that assume he was handling the prop gun negligently and may have been joking around. That should never be done with a firearm even if it’s only a prop.”
Most anti-gun people I know have no idea on how to handle, or said I say NOT handle, a gun. They either run from it like it is going to jump up to kill them or think it is funny to point it at someone.
And given what I see in the public about Baldwin and given his anti-gun stance I could totally see him “fooling around” with a gun. I hope that is not the case.
Either way, someone is dead and Baldwin has to live with killing someone for the rest of his life.
I do hope that he doesn’t use this as a case against responsible gun owners’ firearms rights!
One version of this story is that the director, Souza, ordered a retake of a scene. Baldwin is reported to have been tired so he pointed the gun and jokingly said, “Why don’t I just shoot you instead.” And then he did just that.
This is just a rumor, but to be honest it sounds very plausible. In order to shoot Souza and Cinematographer Hutchins both with one round the firearm would have to be pointing at them. How that happened I don’t know but that’s clearly what did happen. There might be an innocent explanation but I don’t know what that would be. “Accidentally” covering anything you don’t want to destroy with the muzzle of a firearm isn’t an innocent explanation; that’s negligence, hence “Accidentally” in scare quotes. Since there’s no way around the fact the firearm was pointing at the cinematographer and director the only question is how did it get into that position. The possibility that Alec Baldwin who obviously should never be allowed within a hundred yards of a firearm was intentionally pointing it thinking it was a joke is a distinct possibility.
I don’t see how a blank round could possibly kill two people. A blank can kill at short range. There’s an overpowder wad that becomes a projectile when the gun is fired. I a normal round the bullet crimped at the end of the shell holds the powder in the cartridge. Blanks don’t use bullets, but something has to keep the powder inside the cartridge and prevent it from pouring out into the action. So, an overpowder wad is crimped at the end of he shell instead. These wads are normally cardboard and lose energy rapidly but at a few inches away from the target they can be deadly.
Nobody should fool around with these. One reason why shotgun wounds are so dirty is that, if you’re close enough to your target, the overpowder wad will make a wound, too. Not just the shot, which is bad enough if you’re the target.
But there’s no way a blank could kill two people. You’d need a real projectile to over penetrate through the first person to kill the second. There must have been real ammo on the set.
Whatever the investigation reveals, as co-producer Alec Baldwin will be financially responsible if there was negligence on his set.
Anybody who has spent time at a gun range or in the military knows the four rules by heart and muscle memory:
https://gunpros.com/gun-safety-rules/
From “The Pacific”, a gun safety PSA from USMC Gunnery Sergeant Elmo Haney (language warning):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lonajo1EBc
I actually feel sorry for Baldwin, pr*ck that he is. What a godawful thing to have to live with.
At our gun range and all that I have shot at there are some rules about the muzzle of the gun, loaded or unloaded with a flag in the chamber. If a person accidentally allows the muzzle, end of the barrel, to point in the direction of another person there is one warning, if it occurs a second time the careless person will be asked to leave. In competition shooting steel targets we never load until we are in the starting position and then only when told to by the range officer with the muzzle down range at all times.
If I were to ever see a person with an unloaded firearm joking around and pointing it at another person they would be told to leave and never, during the rest of their life time, allowed to return. We require a years conditional membership with participation if half of the events of bench rest or steel challenge competition before we have an idea if a person is careful enough to become a full member. There is no horseplay or joking around with firearms on well run ranges except for some verbal harassment which is good for folks and by the way some of our most proficient shooters are women.
I suppose more details will come out (not to say the “details” will be more accurate than the speculation running around now), so I won’t get ahead of the official story.
I will say, though, that I had heard LONG AGO that no live ammunition was allowed on a movie set. That strikes me as a good idea. Also, because of camera angles, it is seldom necessary to point directly at the “victim” of the shooting. As for Baldwin not checking the load in the firearm, that was a fatal error. And inexcusable. Finally, to have been heard saying something to the effect of “I’ll just shoot you,” then having done so, really doesn’t look good.
My wife likes “action films” with lots of dangerous stunts, explosions, and people shooting all manner of firearms at each other. I just walk out of the room. I’m an avid shooter, and the way firearms are used in these action films is unrealistic and stupid — besides giving non-shooters a very bad example of how firearms can and should be used. So much shooting that is totally superfluous to the story and to real life. It truly sickens me.
And now this shooting on a movie set because someone loaded a “live” round into a revolver? Totally irresponsible and shameful. I hope the production is shut down and never finished. It sounds like a cheap knock off of Eastwood’s “Macho” anyway — old man, young boy, lots of shooting, etc.
Tragic, irresponsible and shameful.
If you read the story at the link I gave about the death of Brandon Lee, you’ll see how it’s possible for a live round to be lodged in the gun from previous use and then projected outward by the blank blast. It’s improbable, but that’s what happened and it killed Lee. It was a very complex series of circumstances.
Neo:
I did read that. As someone has already said, a cartridge case can be loaded with a bullet but no primer or propellant. That would have prevented the “accident” in Brandon Lee’s case. For a live primer to be in a stage prop is almost as irresponsible (and demonstrably dangerous) as what happened in Baldwin’s case. These are tools that are designed to kill! Hollywood treats them as entertainment tools only, and it’s a bad message to viewers.
Maybe this is parsing sentences too closely but here it goes. Baldwin’s first utterance after the shooting was (according to reports), ‘Why was I handed a hot gun?’.
1. So quick to shift blame.
2. There were hot guns on the set and the producer, Alec Baldwin, knew it.
3. As clever as a person thinks they are, better to shut up and wait for your attorney.
It doesn’t seem like a prop gun if it can be loaded with a live round and operate just like a real firearm. If it looks like a firearm and functions perfectly like a firearm, then isn’t it a firearm?
Where as I could forgive the actor for being ignorant and just following direction; I won’t do so for Baldwin, due to his vocal anti-gun stance. If you are anti-gun, then be anti-gun. Don’t even play with them. I don’t play with guns, and I believe in the right to keep and bear arms.
Baldwin is also a producer and on the set that day. I expect producers to provide for a safe operating environment, such as hiring a qualified armorer to handle real prop guns modified to only take blanks, which can be had for $450 online (if it has to look 1880 authentic).
By the way, I also read accounts that Baldwin quickly said “Why was I handed a hot gun?” That’s interesting, because the Daily Beast interviewed a film union member that works as an armorer on sets. Here’s a quote they have:
He further explained that Hollywood propmasters will “only put the amount of blanks into the gun that are meant to be shot in the scene… They’re pretty strict, they’ll always yell out, ‘Gun is hot!’ before they hand it over to the actor.”
I wonder how long trained Army units will be allowed to fire real cannons to accompany outdoor performances of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” Here is a video of the Presidential Salute Battery of the Army’s 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, “The Old Guard,” firing four WWII-vintage M5 field guns as part of the Army Band and Chorus’s annual Fourth of July concert near the Washington Monument. This video covers the battery’s march-on and march-off, and all the intervening commands. The soldiers are obviously highly trained professionals; they have to be qualified mortarmen to be eligible for the gun platoon. According to Wikipedia, the Salute Battery fires blank artillery rounds packed with a 1.5-pound powder charge. I’ll leave it to Army veterans to say whether these blank rounds could harm a civilian who got too close to the field guns.
Anyway, here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILgsFNAxLpg&ab_channel=BrettReistad
“… If you read the story at the link I gave about the death of Brandon Lee, you’ll see how it’s possible for a live round to be lodged in the gun from previous use and then projected outward by the blank blast.”
I could only access part of the links. However, a live round could not become lodged in a gun from a previous use and then propelled outward, by another blank round. Though in the instance of spritzer bullet loaded rounds, an unfired cartridge stuck in battery by a failure to extract could conceivably be set off by the nose of another round acting as a firing pin on the primer of the cartridge that did not extract. This is an issue of double feeding, possibly due to a frantic and panicked operator never pulling the trigger while mindlessly cycling the bolt,, that was addressed in early bolt action repeater cartridge rifles.
Skipping all the details of an unused live round becoming jammed in the action or in battery then, what the Lee instance seemed to be referring to was a bullet becoming lodged in the barrel of the gun, because of an underpowered load or the use of a percussion cap only in the brass. Then, when a blank brass case with a significant load of propellant, but no bullet seated, was fired in the chamber, it drove the old bullet from the barrel.
There may be firearms experts here who could add correctives to these scenarios, but they are generally correct.
Yes, a bullet was stuck in the barrel of the Brandon Lee prop firearm. That process is called “a squib round” misfire in the vernacular. That bullet was subsequently propelled by a blank.
From Wikipedia:
A squib load, also known as a squib round, pop and no kick, or just a squib, is a firearm malfunction in which a fired projectile does not have enough force behind it to exit the barrel, and thus becomes stuck. This type of malfunction can be extremely dangerous, …
What is interesting to me about that is that I would consider such knowledge to be a bare minimum for safe and routine shooting. Yet movie set experts didn’t understand?
Re: Hubert and F’s comments.
The thing I like about the four rules of gun safety is that you have to mess up on two rules to accidentally shoot somebody. By highly oblique extension, if Alec Baldwin decides to act like a reckless goofball, he’s only got the actions of the gun prop master between himself and a tragedy. I do feel a little sorry for him. He’s probably used to working on $100M budget films where nothing like that could happen.
Since I started shooting several years ago, it does now bother me when I see a bad guy in a film violating two or more of the 4 safety rules. Sure, the character is supposed to be a bad ass and doesn’t care about the safety of others. Even so, a character waving a supposedly loaded handgun around muzzling people with their finger on the trigger is something that will be picked up by impressionable viewers.
I saw that the first Smith and Wesson double action revolver was sold in 1880. A .38 caliber. A Colt .44 or .45 would have been much more powerful.
Does anyone real, even a bad guy, shoot with the gun sideways as in some movies?
The plot thickens: “Hours before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of ‘Rust’ with a prop gun, a half-dozen camera crew workers walked off the set to protest working conditions. The camera operators and their assistants were frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints of long hours and pay, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment. The camera crew showed up for work as expected at 6:30 a.m. Thursday and began gathering up their gear and personal belongings to leave, one knowledgeable crew member told the Los Angeles Times. Labor trouble had been brewing for days on the dusty set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.”
https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/camera-crew-on-alec-baldwins-movie-set-walked-off-in-protest-of-working-conditions-hours-before-fatal-shooting/
Huxley:
No. Unless you’re a gang-banger. Or stupid. But I repeat myself.
Stop for a moment and think about the arrangement of the sights when you’re shooting a firearm sideways: they no longer point at the target in such a way that the bullet will impact it.
F:
Exactly. I’ve only shot twice at a range and it drives me crazy to see that on the screen.
I still wonder, though, do even gang-bangers shoot sideways or is that just a Holloywood idea to make a street punk look tuff?
The plot thickens some more:
“The cinematographer who was accidentally killed, Halyna Hutchins, had been advocating for safer conditions for her team, said one crew member who was on the set.”
I also read that she supported the strike.
I see I wrote “spritzer” instead of spitzer. Again.
Maybe I should stick to “pointed”
In the case of a squib being followed by a full round, the result can be catastrophic for the shooter rather than his target.
The old farmer we bought the ” cottage” from, was missing the last joints of the two middle fingers of his left hand. Standard farm incident I figured. Rude to ask.
Then years later I found an octagon barrel in a dormer space. It was bent over and appeared to be burst about half way down.
When I showed it to him, ( he had become a family friend) he explained how he lost those parts of his fingers. Wolves were attacking his animals at night. So he went into the barn – it is built into a hillside – and opened the door looking down over the south pasture. He saw the wolves, he fired a round or two, levered another in the chamber, and then firing it blew the barrel apart along with the joints of two fingers.
In the excitement he did not notice the lack of a report when the next to last round misfired.
Then there was the more humerous story of the old guy who, standing in the doorway of the hunting cabin one snowy opening day morning saw a magnificent buck broadside on the hill only 150 feet straight out the front door. He excitedly levered all seven rounds through the action, without ever pulling the trigger.
They named it “Camp Buck Fever” in his honor. I just took the sign in the gable down about 10 years ago.
This cabin is in the hills just a mile south of the southernmost tributaries of the Black River, for those who know their Hemingway lore. Though it is unlikely he ever traipsed quite that far south or east.
This story makes it sound more like the Brandon Lee shooting.
https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2021/10/22/camera-crew-walked-off-set-of-baldwin-movie-due-to-working-conditions-hours-before-shooting-n424265
PA Cat,
I think that old film “Pleasantville” had an incident with extreme working hours and some of the crew doing 2 hour drives to get back home. One of them fell asleep at the wheel and died. Yep, Brent Hershman. It’s “No joke.”
I can’t speak to what gang bangers actually do, but …
For shorter range shooting, the line of sight through the sights and the relatively straight line path of the bullet intersect, or are reasonably close over some substantial distance of flight. In that case, it doesn’t matter whether the gun is held vertically or sideways.
Now if you’ve dialed in some substantial amount of bullet drop on your scope turret, then you better hold it vertical.
I think it does look stupid to hold it sideways.
Here is a relatively newer fad in the AR-15 world. (I don’t own one.) A standard riflescope for longer range shooting plus an offset or “sideways” red-dot sight for close range; both mounted on the same rifle.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0659/4513/products/ari-4_large.jpg?v=1597866622
https://www.smithandwessonforums.com/attachments/offset-jpg.3622/
TommyJay, Eva Marie, et al.–
Another update on the prop gun shooting: there were previous incidents on the set involving guns: “There were at least two prior incidents of a gun being misfired on the set of the upcoming Western film Rust in the days leading up to Alec Baldwin discharging a prop gun on Thursday that killed the film’s cinematographer and injured the director. . . . According to a knowledgeable production source, Hutchins’ death was avoidable, as they told The Daily Beast that within the past week there had been at least two previous incidents of firearms being misfired on set. The Los Angeles Times reported there was an additional misfiring the previous week. . . . The source points to producers trying to cut costs on the low-budget film as being a direct cause for the accident. Already, six hours before the tragic incident, seven International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) union camera crew workers had walked off set in protest of the abysmal conditions. . . . ‘They did everything they absolutely could to save a nickel at all costs,’ the inside source added. ‘They put everybody in jeopardy in one way or another, whether it was hiring less than qualified people to deal with firearms or it was the constant fight about housing people appropriately. In all my years of doing this, this is one of the worst productions I’ve been on.’ . . . Instead of hiring seasoned, union professionals because of the higher costs, the armorers were young, inexperienced, and non-union members who did not take their job as seriously as they should, the source said.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/alec-baldwin-s-movie-set-was-plagued-by-gun-misfires-before-halyna-hutchins-tragic-death/ar-AAPQpZ8?ocid=BingNews
Re: Shooting sideways…
TommyJay:
I also wonder about handling the kick sideways. I’ve only shot a Beretta 92 and the kick was quite noticeable.
It was hard enough to get the gun back in position in an up-down way. I wouldn’t want to try it sideways. Plus it seems a possibility to whack oneself in the chest since my muscles are weaker in that direction.
Yes, I think usually in the movies they hold it sideways with a one handed grip. One handed, it’s going to flop around quite a bit regardless of other variables.
There is a youtube video of champion Jerry Miculek setting revolver shooting records, and another of him instructing students that I can’t easily find. In the instruction video he talks at length about the two handed grip.
The support hand (the left one, if you are right handed) is critical. That wrist is supposed to be cocked in a full downward rotation, so the wrist muscles are pulling downward at firing time. The muzzle still pops up, but should snap right back down into place.
I’m kind of a wimp. I’ve got a couple 9mm’s I shoot, but enjoy the .22LR more.
There is a drill I’ve shot a few times that is interesting and challenging. Shoot 10 rounds at the bullseye target in each of 5 modes. Two handed single action, right handed single action, right handed double action, left handed single action, left handed double action. It’s unnerving to shoot left handed only, if you are a righty, for the first time.
I’ve never shot anything sideways. Why do it? For grins maybe.
Huxley-
Shooting sideways is only attempted by the utterly stupid or someone who is about to execute someone.
1) You are not aiming. From anything other than say 5 feet your odds of hitting someone go down dramatically.
2) Contrary to popular opinion. Semi auto handguns will misfire if not held properly. The act of the slide moving backwards without a firm base can be interrupted. It sounds odd. But I have actually watched someone trained by the military not understand this. As they extensively train with a rifle. That is braced by your shoulder. It is reliable. When he tried a looser grip with a pistol. He would constantly jam the weapon.
Revolvers do not suffer from this issue.
ALL ACTORS AND STAFF SHOULD BE TRAINED IN THE SAFE USE OF A WEAPON. If they are to be on movie sets with them.
There are several actors who I greatly respect for their proper care in this area.
Tom Selleck- He only uses weapons that he personally owns and is very familiar with. In his TV shows and movies you generally are seeing his personal firearms
Keanu Reeves- Who actually took the time to complete boot camps on proper handling and care. And has become quite proficient in their use over the years.
TommyJay-
Everyone has different tolerances for for recoil,noise. That doesn’t make you a wimp. Any gun you practice with will be safer for you and those around you. Then one you never practice with.
And these days any one you can find ammo for is even better.
geoffb-
I think the industry is rallying around Baldwin at the moment. To not do so demonstrate large flaw in their processes.
But I tend to think this will end with some gross negligence on his part. How while not actually filming do you manage to shoot someone?
The gun should never have been aimed at someone while not filming. And there is no reason to actually fire it in practice with even blanks.
You practice at targets with live rounds.
You dry fire the weapon sans a magazine while not shooting.
Then you manage all safe care while filming. Carefully inspecting all firearms before they even approach the set. To not do so is complete malpractice.
From PA Cat’s link:
“They had two negligent discharges on the same set, on the same day and still had jobs,” the source told The Daily Beast, clarifying same-day misfirings occurred on Saturday. “They had struck out twice and were given a third opportunity.”
Boy oh boy. I’d say some big money is going to change hands in a court of law, or in settlement. I’d love the hear the circumstances of those “misfirings.”
Consider the possibility that Baldwin was recklessly screwing around, supposedly believing that the armorer or prop master was doing their job perfectly, when he knew that those people or person didn’t do their job properly only days prior.
The 9-1-1 call has been aired. The caller said that the AD (assistant director) handed the firearm to the director, and the director handed it to Baldwin. The caller blamed the AD.
I would respectfully suggest we not turn this into a gun thread.
Tweets have a way of catching up to people:
https://twitter.com/TrumpJew2/status/1451645354542309384?s=20
This is just my view(s), so if any of my points turn out to be false, I’ll be very glad to say so:
I’ve taken theatre/plays classes, + movie classes, in college.
I was the sound board operator in a college play, that was about Lee Harvey Oswald, + other assassins.
This was before 2000, but this play was done, with ALL real guns.
Why? I’m not sure now. But all of us students knew that the stage manager, who was in charge of all items, + guns, + blanks, that got into the theatre building, would have out butt, if 1] we didn’t treat all guns as the really dangerous items that they were and, 2] he’d have our butts, + give us to the cops, if we
a) fooled around with a gun, b) didn’t keep all the blanks where they were scheduled to be, or c) pointed the guns directly at the other actors. [We pointed them close to the actors, put not straight at them].
I also have no doubt that he would’ve beaten the snot out of us, if we ever brought live ammunition anywhere NEAR the building.
He probably would have grabbed one of us, + wrestled us to the ground, + trashed us, if he thought we were loading real bullets into a gun, in the theatre/theater building,…where if anything went wrong, HE took all of the blame.
What I mean is- he’d grab us, + wrestle us into submission, to keep us alive, if he saw us putting live bullets into a gun.
I can’t speak for what prop guns, or real guns, were on the movie set of RUST, but I’ve been in one play, [where real guns were used].
It’s just me-
if you’re aiming any toy gun, or prop gun, that has ammunition that hurts people [worse] …than squirt guns/water guns, or toy guns that shoot corks or marshmallows, someone can get hurt, or killed.
( P.S. – I don’t know why the stage-manager chose to use real guns in the play. I guess he thought that REAL guns, firing blanks, looked + sounded a lot [like real guns + real bullets], for his play.
Terminology used by prop people may be causing some confusion. “Live round” to me would be an actual cartridge but from the piece linked by PA Cat in the movie world a blank is also a “live round” because it fires. So the union saying there was a live round in the gun could mean a blank.
Also a gun is “hot” if it has a “live round” but…
“However, the source who was on set when Baldwin discharged the prop gun on Thursday said the cast and crew were told it was a “cold” firearm during the rehearsal as they were setting up the framing.”
Which doesn’t excuse aiming at someone, cocking the gun, and pulling the trigger which should never be done as this was.
More information from the Hollywood Reporter.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alec-baldwin-weapon-rust-shooting-1235035723/
Sounds like the armorer and assistant director who grabbed the firearm were not on the same page. And one live round (w/ bullet) was involved.
My rules would be no firearms or blank ammo period! All scenes and rehearsals not involving simulated gunfire must use inert replica props that are completely incapable of any pyrotechnical effects. Prop ammo may not include any real ammo parts. Gunfire must be simulated using special effects including compressed air and smoke and flame effects or CGI. That makes everything else moot.
Steve Green at PJM has a good post up. Covers a lot of the ground discussed here, minimal speculation, mic drop closer.
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/10/22/breaking-alec-baldwins-gun-loaded-with-one-live-round-in-place-of-a-blank-n1526063
“All that can be said at this early hour in the process is that a propmaster made a terrible mistake, and that Hollywood needs much better on-set rules for firearms handling — and much better training for the know-it-all actors who handle them.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alec-baldwin-weapon-rust-shooting-1235035723/
“According to the records, the gun was one of three that the film’s ***armorer, Hannah Gutierrez***, had set on a cart outside the wooden structure where a scene was being acted. Assistant director Dave Halls grabbed the gun from the cart and brought it inside to Baldwin, unaware that it was loaded with live rounds, a detective wrote in the search warrant application.”
Female. 24 years old according to other sources. Mixture of affirmative action virtue signalling and Film Industry Nepotism perhaps.
Her father is apparently a long time professional film set armorer. So it’s possible she has been rigorously trained. Or not. Regardless, a 24 year old anyone not in the Navy Seals has no business doing that kind of responsible job.
Not that anyone is going to come out of this smelling like roses.
I found this brief bio of Halyna Hutchins, the young woman killed on the “Rust” film set:
It is from this site: http://www.halynahutchinsdp.com/bio
The Hollywood Reporter links posted by several state Ms. Hutchins left behind a husband and young son.
Andrew Branca over at the Legal Insurrection blog posted a lawyer’s analysis of the Baldwin shooting: “To be clear, our goal here is not necessarily to arrive at a definitive legal answer—I’m not sure we really know enough facts with enough certainty to do that. But if we can’t immediately arrive at the right legal answer, at the very least we can understand how to ask the right legal question—and that’s what we’ll do right here, right now.”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/10/legal-analysis-does-alec-baldwin-have-criminal-exposure-after-shooting-woman-dead-in-apparent-mistake/
PA+Cat,
Thank you for that link to an outstanding examination of the legal possibilities in this event. I suspect Alec Baldwin is in real trouble. That is, if a leftist DA and Judge is not involved. If so, it will probably be ruled accidental. Just as Halle Berry’s hit and run resulted in no consequence for her criminality.
This was a big story in AZ in 1973. Burt Reynolds, Sarah Miles, and a questionable death.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/1215483002
I work with guns for a living, 17 year veteran cop. I do not know the standards of gun safety on a movie set, but they should at least adhere to the basics.
I stated this on Mark Wuack’s blog, Meaning in History, … paraphrasing and adding a lot …
Baldwin does have some responsibility, meaning culpability. Baldwin appears from accounts to have been handed a firearm that was portrayed to him as safe and trusted that. Yet, it’s on him to make sure it was safe. That’s a part of basic gun safety. Even if you are handed a semi-auto handgun with it’s slide locked back with no magazine, it’s better to either visually inspect or to cycle the slide back and forth. Basics.
A revolver is easier since you can see the rounds save for one.
My guess is that actors only rely on whatever experts on set they have and mostly do not do basic gun safety checks and probably could not identify a safe round versus a live round.
In a court with jurors, this may mean Baldwin will not be civilly or criminally convicted of anything, but in reality he istill had a duty to make sure it was safe.
Due to problems that have been reported on this set about gun safety, it appears that what could be called an institutional lack of gun safety standards was prevalent on this set.
Baldwin is a hot head. Granted, with the poparrazi and general lack of privacy granted to famous people, I understand some of his reactions. However, he should be rightly hoisted on his own petard due to his hostile opinions on this matter. It’s most interesting that, though, he has only voiced opinions on such things that advanced his political beliefs and is silent on incidences that did not.
Oh, blank ammo can kill. It’s the force of the gun powder explosion pushing air that would do it, not the projectile, which would be absent.
It’s truly basic physics. Sir Isaac Newton, etc. Yeah, cops aren’t troglodytes.
TexasDude:
Am I correct, though, in my understanding (from readings) that blanks can only kill at quite close range?
Neo, yes.
Neo. True. You mentioned Hexum. But there’s a possibility–not necessarily with the Baldwin case–of some detritus left in the barrel which would be propelled by a legitimate blank and injure at a couple of yards, or maybe a dozen.
I don’t know what armorers do on set or preparing, but it sounds confusing. A cleaning rod…. Lot of stuff going on and to keep track of.
Semi auto and full auto weapons may have a barrel restriction affixed inside to provide sufficient back pressure from blanks and if may come loose.
@Richard Aubrey
“Semi auto and full auto weapons may have a barrel restriction affixed inside to provide sufficient back pressure from blanks and if may come loose.”
Military use of blanks include a ‘Blank Firing Adapter’, to maintain enough pressure to cycle the action. Also painted a bright color in order to be visible.
Semi/full auto blanks are also different. In order to feed from the magazine, the leading edge needs to be bullet shaped. So, a longer brass cartridge casing, carefully crimped down to the right profile.
Sonny.
Used those things a lot. But they wouldn’t do for movies. So I wonder if a semi or full auto modified internally for movies could ever be repaired for real use.