Alec Baldwin Will Be Charged With Involuntary Manslaughter in ‘Rust’ Killing

[Jeff Higgins]

We must be on at least our fifth lap in this discussion. The "gun guys" understand. The rest... just our typical internet discussion amongst those who do not understand the subject matter. Their egos demand they be right about whatever their first supposition might have been. And, goddammit, they'll google search until they find something that says they are and, lacking the subject matter knowledge to separate the wheat from the chaff, that satisfies them. It shows they were "right", after all. Frustrating. Very frustrating. Typical, though.

[Steve Carlton]

From what I've read, HG-R loaded the gun and gave it to Dave Halls and "showed" him it was cold and spun the cylinder. I don't think either one of them rattled the dummy rounds to see if there was a BB in it. Later, Dave Halls handed it to AB and told him it was a cold gun in front of the crew. Supposedly Halyna Hutchins instructed AB to point the gun at the camera she was standing next to.

[Jeff Higgins]

Impossible. She was away at lunch. That much has been firmly established.

[Steve Carlton]

I could look it up, but I don't want to spend the time. You'll just dismiss it, anyway. I agree she wasn't in the church when the accident took place. I don't see how that invalidates the accounts of what happened. Whatever. Halls didn't know what he was doing, just accepted some half ass opinion of HG-R that the gun was cold and passed the gun along to AB.

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by Zeke

"He said that the gun fired after he had pulled its hammer back and let it go."

I understand that a normal single action revolver would be 'cocked' if you did this. After pulling the hammer back wouldn't the person remove their thumb or finger from the hammer as a normal course of action?

I guess if you want to get technical about semantics, AB says he didn't pull the trigger. Nope. It was already pulled or disabled. Now it may boil down to a decision of semantics. He let the gun shoot unaware of the status of the ammo.

I will conclude that AB will be charged with something. The situation is unusual to say the least. It's a movie unto itself.

Somewhere in this thread it was mentioned that if you don' t pull the hammer back ALL the way and then let it go it will drop back down onto the firing pin. I have no familiarity with this revolver nor do I know how soft the primer is but if AB did that it may have caused a discharge without pulling the trigger.

[Jeff Higgins]

Of course I would dismiss it, Steve. This has been covered ad nauseum in the press, and on this very forum - Reed was away at lunch when this incident occurred. Everyone involved has agreed that was the case. Halls picked the gun up off of a cart, with Reed nowhere in sight. She did not hand it off to him. This has all been firmly established.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Somewhere in this thread it was mentioned that if you don' t pull the hammer back ALL the way and then let it go it will drop back down onto the firing pin. I have no familiarity with this revolver nor do I know how soft the primer is but if AB did that it may have caused a discharge without pulling the trigger.

Yes, this was discussed in detail earlier in this very thread. I explained at that time why this is impossible. It's only a few pages back.

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

The hammer would have to be pulled back well past the first notch in order to compress the mainspring enough to give it enough energy to detonate a primer.

Here is a good little sketch showing the trigger and hammer. The hammer is shown at half cock, notice the hammer has one notch above and one notch below the notch where the end of the trigger rests.



Here are the four hammer positions. First is the full rest, hammer down position:



Next is that "safety" notch. Notice there isn't much difference between this and full rest:



The half cock notch. We place the hammer in this position to load and unload. When the hammer is in this position, the bolt (the part that fits into the notches around the cylinder and locks it in alignment with the bore) drops out of the way so the cylinder spins freely:



The full cock notch. Notice how big of a swing the hammer takes when we get serious about it. Much less than this, and it just won't go off. And, unless the trigger is held back, either the half cock or safety notches will arrest the hammer's fall anyway:



So, again, unless the gun is dropped and that sear extension of the trigger breaks off, the trigger must be held back in order for the gun to fire.

Oh, and just for the hell of it, how they land when dropped:

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Somewhere in this thread it was mentioned that if you don' t pull the hammer back ALL the way and then let it go it will drop back down onto the firing pin. I have no familiarity with this revolver nor do I know how soft the primer is but if AB did that it may have caused a discharge without pulling the trigger.

Got it thanks. Sorry for the repeat.

[911 Rod]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Don't care about who did or didn't do what. I wouldn't point a gun at someone my own mother had handed me, even if she were as experienced as I am. I fondle guns several times per day, have done so for decades. I clear them. Every. Single. Time. Repeat. This kind of "incident" could not have happened with responsible, gun-trained people.

This is why I won't do Paintball. From a very young age I knew to never point a gun at someone.

[Steve Carlton]

On Oct. 21, 2021, armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, working as chief weapons handler on her second film, loaded a live round into a long Colt .45 revolver Baldwin was rehearsing with, believing it to be a dummy round.

Five other live rounds were later found on the set by investigators.

First Assistant Director Dave Halls said he checked the revolver with Gutierrez-Reed before it was handed to Baldwin. The actor fired the bullet as Hutchins directed him to point the weapon towards the camera.
...
In a Nov. 9, 2021, police interview, Gutierrez-Reed said she loaded the live bullet that killed Hutchins from one of the two white cardboard boxes of dummy rounds she had brought onto the set.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-did-live-rounds-get-onto-set-alec-baldwins-rust-2023-03-27/


After the fatal shooting, Ms. Zachry, the movie’s prop master, took the fired cartridge and compared it to other ammunition from the box it was pulled from, according to detective notes from an interview with Ms. Zachry. Those rounds were marked as dummy rounds — which contain no gunpowder, and are used as stand-ins for real bullets on camera — and could be identified as dummies by a rattling sound they make when shaken, according to detective notes.

“Sarah said she found some rattled and some that didn’t, which led her to believe there was more ‘live rounds,’” the notes said.

Ms. Gutierrez-Reed told detectives she had loaded Mr. Baldwin’s character’s gun before lunch on the day the fatal incident occurred, taking the rounds from a white box marked “dummies” from a prop cart and checking to make sure they either rattled or had a hole drilled in the side, which is another way of distinguishing a dummy round.

One, however, wouldn’t go in the gun, so she decided to clean the gun. In her interview with a detective that day, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed said she was cleaning the gun after lunch when Mr. Halls said over the radio that the gun was needed.

“She said she did check the round before loading it into the gun, and it seemed fine to her, but she checked it while Dave was speaking over the radio in her earpiece as she shook it,” the detective’s report read.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/arts/rust-shooting-charges-alec-baldwin.html


HG-R has clearly admitted that she loaded the gun. She has sued the supplier Seth Kenny for providing live ammunition mixed with dummy rounds. Let's assume she received some live rounds from Kenny- should she not have discovered that in checking the ammunition? Why did Dave Halls even have the gun? Why was there a cart with some live ammunition on it on the set? How did a live round get into Baldwin's bandolier?

[Zeke]

I agree with Higgens. Stop posting until something new comes up. The only new thing that has seemingly come up is reexamining the gun. I think too much time has past for that to produce much. They will argue for days about where the gun has been all this time and who had access.

That may be a very simple and concise bit of info but they won't see it that way.

Details are vague but I remember a disgraced L.A. attorney that used a PI to investigate any adversary with the intention of leveraging them. I won't believe that AB and his legal representatives haven't vigorously pursued this tactic.

[Steve Carlton]

Originally Posted by Zeke

I agree with Higgens. Stop posting until something new comes up. The only new thing that has seemingly come up is reexamining the gun. I think too much time has past for that to produce much. They will argue for days about where the gun has been all this time and who had access.

That may be a very simple and concise bit of info but they won't see it that way.

Details are vague but I remember a disgraced L.A. attorney that used a PI to investigate any adversary with the intention of leveraging them. I won't believe that AB and his legal representatives haven't vigorously pursued this tactic.

I've only been posting on this thread when something new comes up or replying to responses, such as some from Higgins. Are you objecting to that?

Are you implying that the gun may have been altered after the event or that adversaries have been influenced by AB's team? Shouldn't something along those lines be posted if such accusations come up?

[Jeff Higgins]

"Only posting when something new comes up", while simultaneously posting the very first breaking stories from a year and half ago. Stories whose assertions have since been either outright discredited or at least called into question.

We have now discussed this (in several different threads) for a year and a half. Not me, but many others have, over the course of that year and a half, posted stories that refute what those released in the first week or so after the incident had to say. I find it incredible that you somehow missed all of that discussion, all of those references, posted by so many contributing to this discussion.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by Steve Carlton

From what I've read, HG-R loaded the gun and gave it to Dave Halls and "showed" him it was cold and spun the cylinder. I don't think either one of them rattled the dummy rounds to see if there was a BB in it. Later, Dave Halls handed it to AB and told him it was a cold gun in front of the crew. Supposedly Halyna Hutchins instructed AB to point the gun at the camera she was standing next to.

If this is what happened then...

I hate to say it but in this unique case Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is "mostly responsible" for what happened.

That doesn't mean no one else is also partially responsible.

[Steve Carlton]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

"Only posting when something new comes up", while simultaneously posting the very first breaking stories from a year and half ago. Stories whose assertions have since been either outright discredited or at least called into question.

We have now discussed this (in several different threads) for a year and a half. Not me, but many others have, over the course of that year and a half, posted stories that refute what those released in the first week or so after the incident had to say. I find it incredible that you somehow missed all of that discussion, all of those references, posted by so many contributing to this discussion.

Let's see an example.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

Don't care about who did or didn't do what. I wouldn't point a gun at someone my own mother had handed me, even if she were as experienced as I am. I fondle guns several times per day, have done so for decades. I clear them. Every. Single. Time. Repeat. This kind of "incident" could not have happened with responsible, gun-trained people.

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

I agree 100%... I was trained long ago when I was in the army that you must clear all weapons as soon as they come in your possession (handed over or picked up, it doesn't matter... They must be cleared even if the person handing you the weapons clears it in front of you).

But after everything that's happened I think my two questions are important and should be answered.

- So who put the live round into the gun? (Not as important as my next question)

- And why wasn't the gun cleared before being handed to AB?

THe deal is this. In these sorts of situations, there's usually multiple layers of safety protocol. For a catastrophic event to occur, there needs to be multiple failures.

How Complex Systems Fail

ow Complex Systems Fail

(Being a Short Treatise on the Nature of Failure; How Failure is Evaluated; How Failure is Attributed to Proximate Cause; and the Resulting New Understanding of Patient Safety)
Richard I. Cook, MD
Cognitive Technologies Labratory
University of Chicago

Complex systems are intrinsically hazardous systems.

All of the interesting systems (e.g. transportation, healthcare, power generation) are inherently and unavoidably hazardous by the own nature. The frequency of hazard exposure can sometimes be changed but the processes involved in the system are themselves intrinsically and irreducibly hazardous. It is the presence of these hazards that drives the creation of defenses against hazard that characterize these systems.
Complex systems are heavily and successfully defended against failure

The high consequences of failure lead over time to the construction of multiple layers of defense against failure. These defenses include obvious technical components (e.g. backup systems, ‘safety’ features of equipment) and human components (e.g. training, knowledge) but also a variety of organizational, institutional, and regulatory defenses (e.g. policies and procedures, certification, work rules, team training). The effect of these measures is to provide a series of shields that normally divert operations away from accidents.
Catastrophe requires multiple failures – single point failures are not enough.

The array of defenses works. System operations are generally successful. Overt catastrophic failure occurs when small, apparently innocuous failures join to create opportunity for a systemic accident. Each of these small failures is necessary to cause catastrophe but only the combination is sufficient to permit failure. Put another way, there are many more failure opportunities than overt system accidents. Most initial failure trajectories are blocked by designed system safety components. Trajectories that reach the operational level are mostly blocked, usually by practitioners.
Complex systems contain changing mixtures of failures latent within them.

The complexity of these systems makes it impossible for them to run without multiple flaws being present. Because these are individually insufficient to cause failure they are regarded as minor factors during operations. Eradication of all latent failures is limited primarily by economic cost but also because it is difficult before the fact to see how such failures might contribute to an accident. The failures change constantly because of changing technology, work organization, and efforts to eradicate failures.
Complex systems run in degraded mode.

A corollary to the preceding point is that complex systems run as broken systems. The system continues to function because it contains so many redundancies and because people can make it function, despite the presence of many flaws. After accident reviews nearly always note that the system has a history of prior ‘proto-accidents’ that nearly generated catastrophe. Arguments that these degraded conditions should have been recognized before the overt accident are usually predicated on naïve notions of system performance. System operations are dynamic, with components (organizational, human, technical) failing and being replaced continuously.
Catastrophe is always just around the corner.

Complex systems possess potential for catastrophic failure. Human practitioners are nearly always in close physical and temporal proximity to these potential failures – disaster can occur at any time and in nearly any place. The potential for catastrophic outcome is a hallmark of complex systems. It is impossible to eliminate the potential for such catastrophic failure; the potential for such failure is always present by the system’s own nature.
Post-accident attribution to a ‘root cause’ is fundamentally wrong.

Because overt failure requires multiple faults, there is no isolated ‘cause’ of an accident. There are multiple contributors to accidents. Each of these is necessarily insufficient in itself to create an accident. Only jointly are these causes sufficient to create an accident. Indeed, it is the linking of these causes together that creates the circumstances required for the accident. Thus, no isolation of the ‘root cause’ of an accident is possible. The evaluations based on such reasoning as ‘root cause’ do not reflect a technical understanding of the nature of failure but rather the social, cultural need to blame specific, localized forces or events for outcomes. 1

1 Anthropological field research provides the clearest demonstration of the social construction of the notion of ‘cause’ (cf. Goldman L (1993), The Culture of Coincidence: accident and absolute liability in Huli, New York: Clarendon Press; and also Tasca L (1990), The Social Construction of Human Error, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Stonybrook)
Hindsight biases post-accident assessments of human performance.

Knowledge of the outcome makes it seem that events leading to the outcome should have appeared more salient to practitioners at the time than was actually the case. This means that ex post facto accident analysis of human performance is inaccurate. The outcome knowledge poisons the ability of after-accident observers to recreate the view of practitioners before the accident of those same factors. It seems that practitioners “should have known” that the factors would “inevitably” lead to an accident. 2 Hindsight bias remains the primary obstacle to accident investigation, especially when expert human performance is involved.

2 This is not a feature of medical judgements or technical ones, but rather of all human cognition about past events and their causes.
Human operators have dual roles: as producers & as defenders against failure.

The system practitioners operate the system in order to produce its desired product and also work to forestall accidents. This dynamic quality of system operation, the balancing of demands for production against the possibility of incipient failure is unavoidable. Outsiders rarely acknowledge the duality of this role. In non-accident filled times, the production role is emphasized. After accidents, the defense against failure role is emphasized. At either time, the outsider’s view misapprehends the operator’s constant, simultaneous engagement with both roles.
All practitioner actions are gambles.

After accidents, the overt failure often appears to have been inevitable and the practitioner’s actions as blunders or deliberate willful disregard of certain impending failure. But all practitioner actions are actually gambles, that is, acts that take place in the face of uncertain outcomes. The degree of uncertainty may change from moment to moment. That practitioner actions are gambles appears clear after accidents; in general, post hoc analysis regards these gambles as poor ones. But the converse: that successful outcomes are also the result of gambles; is not widely appreciated.
Actions at the sharp end resolve all ambiguity.

Organizations are ambiguous, often intentionally, about the relationship between production targets, efficient use of resources, economy and costs of operations, and acceptable risks of low and high consequence accidents. All ambiguity is resolved by actions of practitioners at the sharp end of the system. After an accident, practitioner actions may be regarded as ‘errors’ or ‘violations’ but these evaluations are heavily biased by hindsight and ignore the other driving forces, especially production pressure.
Human practitioners are the adaptable element of complex systems.

continued

[masraum]

pt2

Practitioners and first line management actively adapt the system to maximize production and minimize accidents. These adaptations often occur on a moment by moment basis. Some of these adaptations include: (1) Restructuring the system in order to reduce exposure of vulnerable parts to failure. (2) Concentrating critical resources in areas of expected high demand. (3) Providing pathways for retreat or recovery from expected and unexpected faults. (4) Establishing means for early detection of changed system performance in order to allow graceful cutbacks in production or other means of increasing resiliency.
Human expertise in complex systems is constantly changing

Complex systems require substantial human expertise in their operation and management. This expertise changes in character as technology changes but it also changes because of the need to replace experts who leave. In every case, training and refinement of skill and expertise is one part of the function of the system itself. At any moment, therefore, a given complex system will contain practitioners and trainees with varying degrees of expertise. Critical issues related to expertise arise from (1) the need to use scarce expertise as a resource for the most difficult or demanding production needs and (2) the need to develop expertise for future use.
Change introduces new forms of failure.

The low rate of overt accidents in reliable systems may encourage changes, especially the use of new technology, to decrease the number of low consequence but high frequency failures. These changes maybe actually create opportunities for new, low frequency but high consequence failures. When new technologies are used to eliminate well understood system failures or to gain high precision performance they often introduce new pathways to large scale, catastrophic failures. Not uncommonly, these new, rare catastrophes have even greater impact than those eliminated by the new technology. These new forms of failure are difficult to see before the fact; attention is paid mostly to the putative beneficial characteristics of the changes. Because these new, high consequence accidents occur at a low rate, multiple system changes may occur before an accident, making it hard to see the contribution of technology to the failure.
Views of ‘cause’ limit the effectiveness of defenses against future events.

Post-accident remedies for “human error” are usually predicated on obstructing activities that can “cause” accidents. These end-of-the-chain measures do little to reduce the likelihood of further accidents. In fact that likelihood of an identical accident is already extraordinarily low because the pattern of latent failures changes constantly. Instead of increasing safety, post-accident remedies usually increase the coupling and complexity of the system. This increases the potential number of latent failures and also makes the detection and blocking of accident trajectories more difficult.
Safety is a characteristic of systems and not of their components

Safety is an emergent property of systems; it does not reside in a person, device or department of an organization or system. Safety cannot be purchased or manufactured; it is not a feature that is separate from the other components of the system. This means that safety cannot be manipulated like a feedstock or raw material. The state of safety in any system is always dynamic; continuous systemic change insures that hazard and its management are constantly changing.
People continuously create safety.

Failure free operations are the result of activities of people who work to keep the system within the boundaries of tolerable performance. These activities are, for the most part, part of normal operations and superficially straightforward. But because system operations are never trouble free, human practitioner adaptations to changing conditions actually create safety from moment to moment. These adaptations often amount to just the selection of a well-rehearsed routine from a store of available responses; sometimes, however, the adaptations are novel combinations or de novo creations of new approaches.
Failure free operations require experience with failure.

Recognizing hazard and successfully manipulating system operations to remain inside the tolerable performance boundaries requires intimate contact with failure. More robust system performance is likely to arise in systems where operators can discern the “edge of the envelope”. This is where system performance begins to deteriorate, becomes difficult to predict, or cannot be readily recovered. In intrinsically hazardous systems, operators are expected to encounter and appreciate hazards in ways that lead to overall performance that is desirable. Improved safety depends on providing operators with calibrated views of the hazards. It also depends on providing calibration about how their actions move system performance towards or away from the edge of the envelope.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by masraum

THe deal is this. In these sorts of situations, there's usually multiple layers of safety protocol. For a catastrophic event to occur, there needs to be multiple failures.

How Complex Systems Fail


continued

Thanks but at the end of the day a live round found its way into a prop gun.

Had that not happened we wouldn't be having this conversation.

- Unless "Baldballs" in a fit of rage (which he's famous for) smashed someone in the head with it!

[greglepore]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

Thanks but at the end of the day a live round found its way into a prop gun.

Had that not happened we wouldn't be having this conversation.

- Unless "Baldballs" in a fit of rage (which he's famous for) smashed someone in the head with it!

No one wants to discuss this, apparently. The entire thing doesn't happen, regardless of AB's faux paus or anything else, without live rounds being on the set, which everyone agrees is wrong. But you and I have raised this repeatedly to deaf ears. So, I gotta figure folks have an agenda. I like those folks, but still...

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by Steve Carlton

Let's see an example.

The examples you seek are found, as I said, throughout our many discussions on this very forum over the last year and a half. You have shown yourself adept at finding year and a half old articles on the internet, and expect us to believe you cannot find examples found in discussions on this forum in which you have participated? And that you cannot recall the contents of these discussions? Please... you are precisely the kind of forum participant to whom I was referring in post #241.