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Alec Baldwin indicted for involuntary manslaughter in fatal gunfire on film set
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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In the US, "I didn't know it was loaded" is not a legal excuse. Try it in court yourself and see how far it gets you.
The VERY first rule about firearms is that 'All guns are treated as if loaded at all times". And you NEVER trust anyone when they tell you it's unloaded. You check yourself to be sure. This includes a prop gun handed to you by a prop person who announces "cold gun!" It takes mere seconds to check it yourself. No excuses.....
Your last paragraph shows even more negligence on the part of Baldwin. He broke another cardinal rule of gun safety by pointing an assumed unloaded gun at something he wasn't intending to destroy or kill. And coupled with supposed rush to film, added to the complete breakdown of basic common sense firearms safety rules.
There was negligence all around that ended at Baldwin. And no one else gets away with that much negligence, (remember he was also a producer - The Boss), in a fatal "accident" and doesn't get tried in court. Because Baldwin is famous and rich should not prevent his day in court.
You're confusing the firing range for the movie set.
There are different rules, and in fact, there have been court cases saying that responsibility for the weapon being safe or not is completely on the armorer.
Baldwin was told "cold gun". That's how movie sets communicate a safe weapon. Full stop.
The great example is if an actor is supposed to throw acid on someone for a scene, do you expect the actor to check that it's actually water? Or do you expect the person who is paid to check it to make sure?
Baldwin followed industry procedure of accepting a weapon that was declared cold. It was handed to him by the Assistant Director, the person normally tasked with ensuring safety on set.
Again "I didn't know it was loaded" is not an acceptable excuse in a court of law when someone dies. And as a producer, Baldwin was also a boss of the movie. He also shares a responsibility to make sure competent people are hired to do dangerous jobs. He also broke your industry protocol when he pointed that gun directly at other people when he pulled the trigger during a break in filming. He very much appears to culpable for a good amount of the negligence that got someone killed.
He needs to be charged and go through the legal process like anyone else would be, (hence the involuntary homicide charge). He should get no pass because he's a rich and famous actor. If the court says it wasn't or was his fault, then fine. The evidence was heard and the court rendered a legal decision and it's done.
It was loaded with dummy rounds, and one real round.
Can you tell the difference with a glance? No? And you expect actors to be able to tell?
He wasn't just fucking around with the gun, either, he was working with the director and cinematographer for a camera test.
The three of them were walking through the motions that would be used for the actual scene, complete with costumes and props. They were trying to get the positioning and lighting right.
I don't know why this is so hard to understand for you.
And again, he doesn't need to go through any process, because the precedent here is clear. The armorer is the person with the full responsibility for making sure that the weapons on set are safe. She was the one who loaded the gun.
If this happened in any other state, Baldwin would never have been charged. But it's New Mexico, and Baldwin made fun of Trump. The prosecutor is trying to make a name for himself by going after someone Trump hates.
Yes, I can. And anyone who is going to handling dangerous items needs to be trained in properly handling them safely at all times. Even a complete novice can easily tell the difference just by looking, particularly after being shown how - it ain't rocket surgery. And it takes mere seconds to make that check. Being an "actor" is NOT a valid excuse. Job safety is a real thing. And it runs from the top down to the end users. And Baldwin failed the safety part on two counts - being a boss on the movie by making or allowing a bad hire for an important safety job and as the end user.
He STILL broke a rule about safety on the set. Don't point guns directly at people - even movies sets have rules about that according to you.
And yes, the set armorer has primary responsibility for firearms safety on set. But that responsibility doesn't end there - it continues down the line of EVERYONE who is involved with the scene.
Nor do I understand the fear of Baldwin being charged. If, as you say, there is precedent for his innocence, then his money and fame should guarantee a not guilty verdict.
As far as the "political witch hunt" goes - maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That's another topic IMO. Perhaps those other states that wouldn't press charges against a famous actor just value the money that a movie production brings in more than the life of any person. The entertainment industry as a whole gets by with a lot of shady shit that simply would not fly in any other industry. And all because of the money it brings in. California is probably the worst transgressor of this. There is billions of dollars riding on looking the other way in Hollywood. And that's NOT a political statement - that's just a lot of cold hard cash talking.
The live round was loaded into a Starline Brass casing. It had the Starline Brass logo on it.
So a complete novice would look at it and the other Starline Brass logos on the dummy rounds and say, they all match, so they must be dummy rounds, just like all the other dummy rounds on set, because until Baldwin pulled that trigger, he and everyone else on set would have said that there were zero live rounds on set.
Baldwin wasn't trained to tell the difference between a live round and a dummy round. The armorer was (saposed to be) trained to do that.
As for you claiming to be able to tell at a glance, that's also a lie.
The only way to tell is to hold the round up and shake it. A dummy round has a BB in place of the powder. It will make a rattling noise when shaken.
Dummy rounds for movie sets will sometimes even come with a fake primer, because they're props and meant to look real.
The way you tell is by looking for the logo, and shaking them. That's it.
The Set was cold, i.e. there were not supposed to be any live rounds at all. Baldwin was handed his prop, and told it was a cold gun, This would have felt like a formality, only done to keep up the practice. Because there were no live rounds, and the prop was not loaded with blanks. It was loaded with dummies.
Except someone on a previous film had reloaded some dummy rounds with live ammo, and some of those rounds made it back to the prop company and were re-issued to the Rust set.
https://variety.com/2021/film/news/rust-investigators-live-rounds-alec-baldwin-1235122384/
We've known where the rounds came from for years now. This is purely political theater, because Baldwin made fun of Trump.