Alec Baldwin

[Graybeard]

I can't say I'm following this daily, but I'm a little shocked at the nonsense being stated over this easily preventable tragedy. Who among us couldn't tell the difference between a live round, a dummy round, and a blank in .45 Colt? The latest nonsense is that dummy rounds and live rounds look and feel exactly the same. Really? Live primers in dummy rounds? We all know what that leads to.

[sqlbullet]

I have gone round and round with this and have learned far, far more about firearms policies on movie sets than I ever thought I would know.  I have vacillated rather broadly between thinking that Alex Baldwin bears very little responsibility to he carries a great deal of culpability.

To address your specific question, I have learned that a properly constructed dummy round will have an un-imprinted primer that is inert, a steel BB inside to rattle and an actual bullet.  Such rounds are generally constructed by the armorer and except for the sound of the BB rattling when you shake it will be indistinguishable from a real bullet.  This is to provide realism to both revolver loading closeups when the primers will be seen and to the front shots of a loaded revolver cylinder.  Generally belt fed firearms will not have the primers dealt with and indeed on many of my favority WWII shows if you carefully look at ammo belts, the rounds are just plain missing the primers.

I will be the first to stand up and say that without that knowledge I am not sure it would be superficially obvious to me which were which and it may take me several seconds of inspection to make a guess.

What I have gathered is that on this set they were ignoring most of the standard safety protocols.  The AD has a history of not respecting firearms on set and bypassing safety, which has led to numerous incidents on his sets in the past.  The armorer on the set was not dedicated only to the job as armorer but had other responsibilities on the set.  There had been previous "firearms incidents" which I can only assume are negligent discharges of a gun.  I do not know if those previous incidents were of blanks or live ammo, but either is very, very disconcerting.  They were not having the mandatory daily safety meetings and they did not follow process when distributing the gun to the actor.

This all leads me to a couple of opinions:

1.  Everything we all know about firearms safety doesn't really apply to the way firearms are managed on a movie set.  Proclamations about what would or wouldn't happen to us don't really mean as much as we thing because we don't know the reality of that environment.  The verification of how the gun was loaded was not Alex Baldwin's job as the lead actor, and the two people whose job it was completely failed to do their jobs.

2.  No doubt that standard firearms safety rules were violated.  The gun was pointed at things the destruction of which could not be tolerated, specifically people.  If we can do the forced perspective needed to make John Rhys-Davies(6'1") look three feet shorter than Orlando Bloom (5'11") the surely we can accomplish forced perspectives that prevent us from point guns at people on movie sets without sacrificing realism.

3.  Safety was a corner being cut to stay on budget.  There is ample evidence and testimony that money was being saved by cutting safety corners.  Crew member turnover was high due to safety violations.  Responsibility for this would fall on the producers of the movie.

This is a tragedy and I express my condolences to the family of Halyna Hutchins who died and wish a rapid recovery to Joel Souza who was wounded.  I also am very sorry for what Alex Baldwin, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, and others involved with the set must be experiencing.

However, if we wish to honor Halyna Hutchins in death, we must correct assess the errors and omissions that lead to this tragedy.  Alec Baldwin is unavoidably first on that list.  He pointed a gun at another human being and pulled the trigger.  He, as producer, had fudiciary duty to provide for the well-being and safety of the set either personally or by proxy.  His long association with the movie profession, his position of producer and his position of actor provided him with the needed industry standards awareness, management oversight and personal situational knowledge of set conditions to know and correct the issues before a tragedy occurred.  He did not execute on that duty.

It is in the hands of law enforcement to determine if he has any criminal responsibility for which he must answer.

Regardless of that outcome, no Hollywood studio should ever trust Alec Baldwin again to produce a movie or be involved in an oversight or management capacity on a movie set. This is not a young man with a future we need to salvage.  Mr. Baldwin has had a long, prosperous career.  I am sure he dreads the idea this event marks the end, the end it should be given the effect to which he employed his experience and wisdom here.  If he continues to act, he should be banned from handling arms regardless of the conditions or situation.

[Graybeard]

I was unaware of the steel BB, inert primer concept. It makes sense from the perspective of realism when loading revolvers. Although whenever I?ve seen close ups of revolvers being loaded they usually cut to another camera before it?s put to use. Plenty of time to swap out for blanks.

In this case, since the .45 Colt case is rarely close to filled with smokeless powder, shaking it end to end should tell one it?s a live round. Not hearing a BB (thanks for that info) would be the other. I suppose it?s possible that they had real black powder live rounds, but highly unlikely.

I would agree with you that there are a variety of factors that caused a preventable death and serious injury. Due to the financial and possible criminal liabilities involved, between lawyers and the media, there will be continuous efforts to obfuscate the real story. I am pretty confident it boils down to a combination of incompetence, arrogance, ignorance, and money. I agree that it?s a tragedy that someone had to die for those reasons.