Or as one commenter put it, “if the scene called for Baldwin to point the gun at his own head and cock the hammer, do you think that he might ask for it to be double checked or check it himself?”

Hollywood law isn't even a idea that should be in consideration with criminal law.
Any company could write rules to automatically blame the janitor. That is internal only to them. Contracts and procedures on paper.
It shouldn't matter.

The way I see it, Baldwin is far more responsible for the woman's death than the armorer is and should therefor suffer a much harsher penalty; were I to be horsing around with a "prop gun", behind the scenes, and decided to aim and fire it at someone like I was a ten year old playing army, and I did so without first verifying that my toy was not actually loaded with anything (including blanks/big noise makers), then I would expect to have the book thrown at my dumb, negligent ass, and rightly so.

I didn't even recognize her!

If I'm not mistaken Baldwins trial is supposed to start within the next 6 months .

And still after all this time no one can tell us how a live round got loaded?

It appears that she was chosen for her inexperience

I'm guessing the story behind that would make ALL of them look worse/more guilty.

Baldwin is ultimately responsible; he failed to inspect the weapon when it was handed to him. You never accept a gun from someone without personally verifying whether it is loaded or not. He should be convicted and I hope he is.

I think this is appropriate. She was in charge of the "prop" weapons (actual weapon but supposed to be with fake cartridges). My understanding was she was not present on set at the time. Yet she left the props out. And at other times allowed them to be used as real weapons with real cartridges.

Baldwin also shares some responsibility both as actor and Producer. As producer, he cheaped out on getting a proper crew. He wasn't paying the crew properly, which lead to chaos on the set.
And While some of the people on this board who are in the business claim the actor isn't responsible for a firearm check, I believe anyone handed a firearm should personally check the condition. Anyone handling one should be taught how. Baldwin was negligent and is also guilty.
And the director is guilty as well, since he was improperly handling firearms.

Can anyone explain why there were live rounds on the set??? What was the purpose?

Unfortunately it was because the rules were loosy goosy and unqualified people were in charge . One found guilty the next trial slated for May .

The bottom line is the buck stops with her. She failed in her job.

To those who feel that AB didn't do his due diligence when handed the firearm, the next time you fly into a city and go to the car rental counter, insist that they put the car up on the lift so you can personally inspect brake lines, ball joints, steering and any other components that could fail and cause an accident.

I mean why trust the rental company, who you are paying, to make sure everything is safe and in working order before driving off.

Craigster i think the confusion we see in this thread can be expected in a courtroom if this is a jury trial. If i'm AB i'm probably a little nervous about that.

Absolute nonsense. There is no equivalency between a firearm and a car. We covered this a couple of years ago in the context of a race car driver being expected to inspect their own car prior to a race, and put it to bed then. It failed to pass even the most cursory examination then, and it failed again today.

You keep going to the same well. The attempt to compare a man handling a firearm to someone getting in a car is absolutely ludicrous. Guns are different than anything else we handle and their rules are, therefor, necessarily different as well. And so painfully simple that even Hollywood actors should be able to abide by them. It would have taken less than two or three seconds to inspect that gun.

All I know is that IMO Halyna Hutchins was the innocent of the three. Alec Baldwin, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed both failed.

Hals put it in the chamber when he took the pistol from the trailer... Pleads out and will hang those around him...

Perfect Murder.

Baldwin's trial scheduled for July, Rick.....

No purpose. The situation appeared to be that there was live ammunition on the ranch. How it got mixed in is anyone's theory. There were a lot of pissed off people there for some reason and I can guess. But would that come to sabotage? I think it did.

But the responsibility, even if someone planted live rounds, is still going to come to the person in charge of guns. It got pretty screwed up, didn't it? Now to try Baldwin is the next fiasco.

But we beat that to death a year or so ago so no need to start that again. Just go find the thread and comment there. I'll refrain.

Actor not responsible. Elevate to the armourer. What about elevating it even further up to management?

Baldwin was responsible for reviewing the competency, the hiring the amourer, and maintaining site safety environment.
As Producer/Director he oversaw the crews and responsible for everything.
That she wasn't even on an active set is on him as well. They should have stopped um shooting for the day, or hired a replacement armourer.

No love for AB here. Not when he wants to impose restrictions on others, while owning and making money off the culture.

The bottom line is that there is not supposed to be any live ammo on set, at a studio or on a prop truck.

NEVER. EVER.

Even the prosecutor said that when Gutierrez-Reed arrived on set, the camera department had walked off the job leaving over 3 hours of "down time". More than enough time to check the dummy rounds, secure them until needed. She failed to do that.

We have also gone over the protocol. She was supposed to take each round from a box labeled "dummy rounds" (not loose rounds from a fanny pack) and shake them in front of cast and crew, listening for the BB, and then loading them into the gun one by one. She failed to do that.

If AB had opened the action of the gun after she handed it to him, that would have interrupted the "chain of custody" and he could (and maybe still will) be responsible for Hutchins' death.

Captains on a ship can still get in trouble when a pilot mucks up.
Each have their failures from what I've been able to read.
Baldwin didn't have his ship in order.
The armorer didn't have her part of the ship in order.
They both seem to carry some responsibility.

As for Baldwin not checking the gun, ok , I get that.
But he didn't take the gun from the person he put in charge of the gun.
That's different than if he did.

You are correct and I was wrong . Thanks for the correction .

Baldwin should have never accepted the firearm from anyone other than the armorer, if he did it’s one of his numerous demonstrable acts of negligence.

From that point on its all on Baldwin.

I can see how it could happen. I can not see how it could have happened without Baldwin’s negligence.

Yes, and I understand Jeff's points.

This is an industry that has been handling gunfire for over a century with only 3 documented firearm deaths. Jon Erik Hexum, Brandon Lee and now Halyana Hutchins. All 3 due to inexperienced armorers and negligence.

Expect to see a lot of CGI gunfire in the future, all added in post production. All in the name of "on set safety".

Is the Director responsible for ensuring that the necessary training is completed? IMHO I think it is Baldwin's negligence as Director that made this tragedy possible.

Why should any gun being used in a movie even be capable of firing a live round?

Aren't movies supposed to be make believe?

I can never get past this fundamental inconsistency with basic gun safety. I could never work in the movie industry. If I had somehow gotten into it and found this out, I would quit whatever job I had

I can't get over the fact that she's standing there one second, seeing all the earthly surroundings. Then 1/10,000 of a second later it's St. Peter...

I understand all of that, and will not argue against any of it.

There has recently been a new twist introduced into all of this. That YouTube video, wherein she is seen grabbing loose rounds from a fanny pack, was designed to do just that. Remember, that video was made while they were shooting another scene entirely. Likely made on a different day than the fatal shooting as well. It achieved its objective by insinuating that that was what happened immediately prior to the fatal shooting, by trying to portray that level of chaos and hurry as "typical" on that set.

Let's not forget, however, that the Assistant Director, just prior to that fatal shooting, picked the gun up off a table and handed it to Baldwin. It was before they had started shooting, there was no rush, and Gutierrez-Reed was not even on the set. She was not hurriedly fumbling in her fanny pack to reload that revolver. This distinction is very important.

Abso-freaking-lutely it would have "interrupted the chain of custody"!!!!!!! That's what we want!!! Everyone who touches any firearm under any circumstances checks its condition (loaded or unloaded?). Every. Single. Goddamned. Time. Again, it takes seconds to do so. Seconds. It's so bloody simple and easy there can be no excuse for failing to do so.

How many here believe that poor woman would still be alive today had Baldwin taken just a few seconds to check that revolver?

I do. Is he still maintaining that the gun "just went off"? I don't remember. I know that the likelihood of that happening has been discussed here but I don't recall if he has stayed with that.

Baldwin has stuck with that story. This in spite of the fact that the FBI forensics lab determined that that revolver could not have fired unless the trigger was pulled. An independent forensics lab came to the same conclusion after the FBI reached theirs. They had to actually break off either the full cock notch on the hammer, or the end of the trigger, to make it fire without pulling the trigger. The gun both received was undamaged, they broke it in testing and rebuilt it.

Because the movie's producer was being cheap. Look at everything to do with that movie. It had a budget of only $10M. Middle of nowhere location, all the people involved were fresh, cheap, up and comers.

Craigster,

Your analogy of the rented car is wrong. Checking the firearm status as too whether or not it is loaded is analogous to a walk around of the car to look for flat tires and other major problems, it is faster to check the firearm than a walk-around. Your analogy to putting the car on a lift for an inspection is more along the lines of a function check, again far more involved and longer on a car than firearm.

As far as chain of custody being broken by conducting a safety check I am at a loss for words on that level of SNAFU.

S/F, FOG

Did you miss the previous, long thread on this?

IIRC, there are fakes of many common guns that can be used in movies, but in the case of rare or unusual guns where it doesn't make sense to make a one-off fake gun,a real gun is used with blanks.

The particular gun in question is a Colt Single Action Army, or an Italian made clone of that gun (Uberti, Cimmaron, Pieta, Pedersoli, and others). I would venture to say one of the most used movie guns of all time, featured in every Western made since, well, since they began making Westerns. From "big screen" to television. If there were ever a gun whose use in movies and television would justify the manufacture of an entirely safe, non-firing example, this would be it.

Beyond that, it would be incredibly simple to modify a functioning example of this design to where it would safely fire the ubiquitous "Five in One" blank, the industry standard for revolvers (these can be "fired" in revolvers and rifles chambered in .38-40, .44-40, .44 Special, .44 Magnum, and .45 Colt, hence their name), while not being able to fire a "live" round.

With multi tens of million dollar Hollywood budgets, this falls into the category of "chump change". They would spend more over the course of production on coffee for the crew than they would on these modifications.

No excuse, just no excuse for having a gun anywhere near the set that is capable of firing "live" ammunition.

In this instance it was pointing the gun directly at the camera to where you see the "dummy" rounds in the cylinder. Even in this instance the camera operator is usually behind thick plexiglass or off camera operating focus remotely. But of course due to "budgetary concerns" they didn't practice this simple task.

Much different with semi autos where you need to plug barrels to make the gun "cycle" with low pressure loads like 1/4 and 1/2 blanks which you use indoors or exteriors in neighborhood locations where you want to keep the sound of gunfire at a minimum.

Just a bad situation all around to save a few bucks.

Mr. Baldwin has denied responsibility for Ms. Hutchins’s death. In December 2021, he told ABC News that he cocked the gun but did not pull the trigger.

This was contradicted by an FBI firearms expert at the trial, who said the Italian-made Pietta revolver would not fire when fully cocked without the trigger being pulled.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/armorer-alec-baldwin-movie-rust-found-guilty-involuntary-manslaughter

So...lying to the FBI? (why are they involved in a single shooting event?)

It would still involve unloading the firearm and checking each round for the rattle of a BB or a hole in the side of the casing and then reloading. Dummy rounds do not necessarily have spent primers. Time is money when filming and that's why you employ someone who's specific job is to make sure all firearms are safe and secured.

It was the armorers job to have the guns secured prior to filming and to load the dummy rounds in front of cast and crew. That did not happen.

All of you seem to think this was like a Saturday afternoon at the Rod & Gun Club. There should have been NO live ammunition anywhere near the film set.

Next you're going to insist that all actors should personally inspect any fake explosives with timers in a James Bond film "Just to make sure it's not real C-4". Alec Baldwin could have inspected the gun himself every time it was handed to him and it wouldn't have done any good. He's not a "firearms expert". Unfortunately neither was the armorer that HE hired and for that he has some responsibility.

Craig- do you think Baldwin has liability as an actor for pointing the gun where he did and pulling the trigger?