Comment by seanw444 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanw444 | Hacker News Reader

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Agreed. If he wanted to have real firearms there, he needs to know how to operate real firearms. If he hired the armorer (or another person dedicated to firearms safety) to teach him how to do that, and they failed at that job, then the they should get their fair share of blame / repercussions. Which it sounds like they did, with a "negligent handling of a deadly weapon" or something.

Ultimately, though, as someone that is very familiar with guns, I have a hard time sympathizing with Baldwin. You brought real guns onto the set, and you pointed them at people. Primarily people that had no business having the guns pointed at them. It wasn't even another actor during filming, which I would have at least understood to some degree. It seems like the perfect storm of things had happened for him to "accidentally" kill this person he didn't like.

At the end of the day, any actors / set workers handling real firearms should have thorough training before using them. Trigger discipline, how to check the chamber, identifying cartridge types, emptying the chamber before setting it down, not aiming at people who aren't even actors...

> you pointed them at people. Primarily people that had no business having the guns pointed at them. It wasn't even another actor during filming, which I would have at least understood to some degree.

the scene involved pointing the gun towards the camera, which means the gun is pointing towards the crew.

> Trigger discipline

How do you maintain trigger discipline when the scene requires you to point a gun at someone, or in someones general direction, with your finger on the trigger?

> check the chamber, identifying cartridge types, emptying the chamber before setting it down

If an actor tries to check the chamber, messes with the cartridges, the gun immediately goes back to the armorer to be made safe before being handed back to the actor, if the actor check again, guess what happens?

It's very important to understand that on a film set the standard rules do not apply, or more precisely the rules apply in different ways.

Don’t forget that Baldwin (who I adore as an actor) has been vocally and voluntarily ignorant of guns and safe gun handling. He’s been one of these “I want nothing to do with them because they’re so dangerous, so I refuse to even learn about them and how to handle them safely”.

I hope this tragedy serves as a lesson for those who are “anti-gun” who seem to think there’s nobility in being willfully ignorant about a simple mechanical device.

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