[masraum]

Originally Posted by MMARSH

That has been my thought as well.
Many years ago I played a hired hit man on the show "Arrest and Trial" I was handed a handgun with specific instructions to not manipulate it and to only give it back to them at the end of the scene.. I did several scenes where I pointed it at the actor I was trying to kill and pulled the trigger. This was a controlled environment.

As an "actor" I believed I was handed a prop by an expert and did what I was told. It didn't even begin to occur to me that I should check if the weapon was safe.

In contrast, in real life I would never think of pointing a gun at someone unless I was willing to kill them. All the guns I carry are always loaded with a round in the chamber and any gun handed to me would be checked and cleared. This is in environments where real ammo is used.

We use our real weapons with paint rounds in training scenarios all the time. Everybody is checked and double checked. You check yourself and you check others. Even though live rounds are not even allowed onto the training facility. In the scenarios, we point and shoot each other with the paint rounds. In 30 years, I'm not aware of any accidents, other then the paint rounds causing some good strawberries...

I just don't think it's realistic that every actor would even know how to clear a weapon or render it safe. I think that's the responsibility of the Armorer or the prop master whose supposed to be the expert.

In this case, I agree with Craig in that Alec Baldwin the producer is also responsible for hiring someone who obviously wasn't a expert. To mix a prop gun with live ammo on a set. That's just insane.

This is what many of us think, but Jeff differs in that he believes that every actor should be responsible for treating every gun on a set like a real gun and being responsible for verifying the situation.