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A few thoughts here.

1) I find it unlikely that anything propelled by a blank charge had enough oomph to hit the gal and exit her body and strike the director.

2) no one outranks safety. Anyone picking up a firearm, or being handed one, needs to verify its state, and treat it as if it was loaded.

3) Baldwin pointed it at people and pulled the trigger. It wasn’t a “misfire” or “accidental discharge”. It was a “negligent discharge”.

There were multiple violations of basic firearms safety regs here. Not a single violation is acceptable. Keep it up long enough and someone is going to be killed.

But that's not what happened according to the article. It says Baldwin was practicing pulling the gun out of the holster. Do you have any sources that say he deliberately fired?

A blank has a normal amount of gun powder. Brandon Lee was killed by the tip of a dummy bullet that was propelled by a blank charge. Unless someone snuck live ammo on set, then it seems like something like that must have happened here.

No, a blank doesn’t have the normal amount of gun powder. Source: I’ve used them, also reload my own ammo and know this shit very well.

As to your first point: firearms just don’t go off. He pulled the trigger, while pointing it in an unsafe direction.

I won’t point a weapon at anything I’m not willing to kill EVEN IF I have rendered it inert (removing a firing pin or similar). Basic fucking rule of handling a firearm. If it’s a gun, you treat it as if it’s loaded all the time, every time. Cuz shit happens, and 99.9999% of the time it’s human error.

I know nothing about guns, but I’ve been reading other sources that seem to contradict your absolute statements:

1. This was a period western and could have been using older single action revolvers that have fewer modern safety mechanisms to avoid accidental discharge. From quora: “ With many single action (cowboy) revolvers, the hammer does rest on a cartridge beneath it. They will fire if they land on the hammer. For those, you leave one chamber empty and keep that one underneath the hammer. That makes them completely safe, too.”

2. Are blanks uniform in amount of gunpowder? Not sure what happens today but I read that in the Crow incident they were overloading blanks with more than the typical amount of gunpowder to overemphasize the muzzle flashes.

3. While your points about gun safety are reasonable, this appears to not be how it is done in movie sets. The armorer is specifically in charge of safety checking all guns repeatedly. Not the actor.

And how they do it on movie sets has gotten 3 people killed that I know of, and probably more.

They really need to learn from the professionals.

Also, to be pedantic: Brandon Lee wasn’t killed by a “bullet tip”. He was killed by a bullet. A bullet is the projectile that comes out of the weapon. A cartridge is the whole thing: case, primer, propellant, bullet.

> 4. Baldwin was told he had a "cold gun", which was clearly wrong. This had happened earlier on the set, and nothing was done to correct the problem.

That makes it sound like Baldwin was a victim of others' negligence. But he's not just an actor but the producer, so the buck for repeated safety violations stops with him.

Also, anyone handling a gun, even a prop gun, should be aware of and follow the rules of gun safety. The fact Baldwin didn't check the weapon himself is an enormous act of negligence on his part. You don't just take someone's word for whether or not a weapon is dangerous, ever. Nobody ignorant of weapons safety should even be in the same damn room as a gun. I don't blame Baldwin personally, but whomever is responsible for fostering an on-set culture and policy that would ever allow this to happen deserves to be in prison.

How is an actor supposed to know the difference between a blank and a dummy round on a specially modified prop gun? That's what the licensed armorer is for. Asking actors to have any responsibility to suss that stuff out seems like a recipe for disaster.

Blanks and dummy rounds do not look similar. If your job involves handling functional guns maybe you should take five minutes to learn the difference. If you're putting guns in peoples' hands you should make sure they know how to take three seconds to check if they're about to murder someone. It's about layers of safety.

> How is an actor supposed to know the difference between a blank and a dummy round on a specially modified prop gun?

Dummy rounds are generally visually similar to live rounds (not blanks, which apparently are referred to as “live rounds” in film), so a readily distinguishable from blanks.

The gun was supposed to have all empty chambers.

If that were indeed the case, then Baldwin could have determined it was actually loaded easily with just a few seconds of inspection after having been handed the firearm.

Most actors receive training with firearms so they can handle and fire them convincingly on set. Baldwin has made a several films where he handled firearms, so I'm certain he's had safety training at points in his career. Taking someone's word for it being a "cold gun" is irresponsible.

So? You still treat it as if it were live.

I believe it was his point that even someone who can't tell a blank from a dummy from a live round can tell whether or not there's something in the gun.

He was “a” producer. If he had actually decision making responsibility, I agree with you, but it sounds like he may have just been an actor who was given a producing credit as partial payment for taking a lower salary, and not someone with any actual involvement in the production decisions. A producer in name only, which I understand is common in the business.

That's not correct.

"Alec Baldwin is producing and starring in the independent Western action movie “Rust” with Joel Souza directing from his own script, based on a story by Souza and Baldwin."

...

"Highland Film Group will launch international sales at the upcoming Marché du Film Online, which launches on June 22. CAA Media Finance is handling the domestic rights, and BondIt Media Capital is financing. "Baldwin is producing through his El Dorado Pictures banner alongside Anjul Nigam and executive producer Matthew Helderman. Baldwin and Nigam produced Souza’s “Crown Vic.” Anna Granucci is also producing with Elizabeth L. Barbatelli as an executive producer."

source: https://variety.com/2020/film/markets-festivals/alec-baldwin...

That could all still just be labels. I worked with a former (presumably) credited film producer. They produced schedules, not decisions.

It says quite clearly that Alec Baldwin and Joel Souza are following up with a second production together, filming a script written by Baldwin -- ironically about an accidental shooting -- financed by some other group and likely executed by others.

So the speculation that "it sounds like he may have just been an actor who was given a producing credit as partial payment for taking a lower salary" that I commented on is clearly not correct.

As to the "decisions", I'm sure he didn't sit down and sweat the operational details ("decisions"), where to get film, etc. But for decisions such as "who'll be the DP?", "we'll shoot in Santa Fe because it allows for non-union crew", or minimally chiming in on the production crisis and crew accommodations issue, are you seriously claiming Alec Baldwin was just hanging out chit chatting with the crew and was not involved at all? He's not some airhead pretty face, he's a business man as well and he is making a film with partners.

You know, if by all appearances you as an industry heavyweight are a driving decision maker in a project to the extent Baldwin has been in this, spend significant time on set and there's plain evidence of corner cutting leading to several serious safety lapses before you shoot someone dead, you don't get to say "it was all just appearances, I share no blame".

Absolutely. He bears responsibility for the shoddy safety protocols.

> But he's not just an actor but the producer

Rust has (currently) 5 credited executive producers, 6 producers, and a co-producer.

Even if Baldwin’s producer credit reflects an actual responsible role and not a producer credit in lieu of additional pay, no one not involved in the production can say from the credits alone that Baldwin had any responsibility over the actions that led to the incident, beyond that which he had as an actor (which is not none, to be clear.)

The policy against live ammo on set seems wise but a little difficult to enforce (unless you put everything behind TSA-style checkpoints). The sheriff's department has said yesterday that they can't rule out live ammo and expect to have more forensic info in the coming week:

https://deadline.com/2021/10/alec-baldwin-fatal-shooting-bul...

Good to know. Holy cow if they were illegally using live ammo and had previous problems with cold guns not being cold.

However I think this is all just based on the original press release the union put out which said "live single round". According to the LA Times - in movies a blank is considered a live round.

Re 4: not only had this happened earlier on the set, people walked out over poor gun safety.

And it is coming out that the Assistant Director on this shoot has a lengthy history of blowing off firearm safety: https://consequence.net/2021/10/alec-baldwin-shooting-crew-w...

None of this matters. It is the responsibility of the operator to ensure the weapon is safe to fire. If the operator doesn’t know how to do this, then they shouldn’t be using the firearm—-go take a safety class. It’s the same thing as flying an aircraft—-the PIC is responsible for ensuring the plane is safe to fly, not the aircraft owner.