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Grand jury in New Mexico charged the actor for a shooting on Rust set that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins
Actor Alec Baldwin is facing a new involuntary manslaughter charge over the 2021 fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the movie Rust.
A Santa Fe, New Mexico, grand jury indicted Baldwin on Friday, months after prosecutors had dismissed the same criminal charge against him.
During an October 2021 rehearsal on the set of Rust, a western drama, Baldwin was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when it went off, fatally striking her and wounding Joel Souza, the film’s director.
Baldwin, a co-producer and star of the film, has said he did not pull the trigger, but pulled back the hammer of the gun before it fired.
Last April, special prosecutors dismissed the involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin, saying the firearm might have been modified prior to the shooting and malfunctioned and that forensic analysis was warranted. But in August, prosecutors said they were considering re-filing the charges after a new analysis of the weapon was completed.
He hired the cheapest firearms manager, tolerated crew playing with real bullets, and so when he’s handed a loaded gun, it’s a direct result of his own mistakes.
Lowest bidder aside, how is this clearly not the armorer’s fault front and center? It was her responsibility to handle the set props. What Baldwin paid them is irrelevant to what she claimed she could provide and was obligated to provide under contract.
She is literally the one to (a) claim the firearm was safe, but (b) load it with live ammunition.
???
Work in the industry, doc side but this is pretty basic producer stuff. This is 100% on the armorer and the only reason they keep trying to charge Baldwin is the legal grey area of the state they filmed in. Had this happened in a state with more production (Georgia, Louisiana, California) there would be a more direct way for prosecutors to go after the correct person. Georgia and California specifically has legal precedent from deaths on set like this.
One of the reasons credits are so long is because we hire people to maintain a safe set - think of it like a foreman for safe worksite in construction (which we also hire often). We hire a ton of people for safety from actual police to medics and rescue personnel.
Hiring an armorer is SPECIFICALLY to avoid situations like this. Because the production company is like “hey you know what? I don’t think me, some producer knows how to use a gun safely, I should hire someone who’s certified to do that.” It’s not some token job, they’re supposed to be trained on how to properly load the powder of the blank rounds, how to mark and flag hot guns and dead props, and pretty fucking much rule #1A is never bring live ammo anywhere near your set.
Baldwin should not be held criminally liable and any half decent entertainment lawyer will settle that. Now civil liability, that’s certainly more realistic. But even then it should be the production LLC not any 1 person.
In your experience, have you ever seen the responsibility of set prop safety fall on the producer and not be delegated to someone else? Based on what you write here, I assume not which would confirm my initial belief.
… Except for one other guy taking a gun he knew nothing about, pointing it at a person and pulling the trigger.
No, I think they are both guilty. Obviously not equally.
If the common judicial practice is different - then maybe some day there’ll be a new precedent.
Sure, it’s a responsible viewpoint to assume that any gun is loaded and dangerous, even until the moment you yourself have cleared it… but the case is lacking mens rea, because who in their right mind would put a hot gun as a prop on a film set? While Baldwin killed Hutchins, I find it hard to draw any criminal negligence from it.
There’s one nuance there, they weren’t filming or something. They were playing with that gun. While the armorer is to blame, if they’d show a little respect, one person would be alive.
They weren’t playing. They were blocking a scene.
https://lemmy.zip/comment/6483250 - same thing if you are waving a gun as a means of expression
You’ve been corrected on this. Will you correct your statement or double down? I’m placing bets already
Too bad that’s not what happened. What do you get out of making up stories like this?
An article I read right after this happened (which very well could have been a hit piece) said she (the armorer) was in her early 20s and would fuck around and go shooting with the prop guns when filming wasn’t happening. So… kind of. Yes
Sounds like there’s lots of blame to go around
She’s guilty, he probably has some liability being the producer.
He was far from the only producer. Quite frankly I doubt very much he did any real work besides acting.
The liability belongs to the company as a whole, absent some slam dunk of a memo where Baldwin personally said “Hire this lady, she’s my cousin’s kid, also I personally know she falsified her credentials but fuck it.”
It’s essentially a question of “who’s in charge around here and whose ass will be on the line?” Nearest example I can think of is if your boss tells you to deliver something and you get into a car accident, your work covers you with their insurance (USA!)
Even more concisely summed up with an incredibly apropos phrase, “if you give a monkey a gun, you don’t get to blame the monkey when someone gets shot.”
It is, but groveling, weak sycophants hate Baldwin for mocking their traitor god.
One of the biggest rules of gun safety is treat every gun as if it’s loaded even when as far as you know it isn’t. Regardless of how you think the ratio of culpability falls or who should be held legally accountable, he is at least partially responsible because he was the person holding the gun and aiming it at someone.
That’s rule number one on the shooting range, It’s not quite the same in film or on stage.
In those cases, actors have to trust their prop master or armorer.
Those are the people specifically hired to make sure the gun or the bullets are fake.
Baldwin was handed a gun, and specifically told that it was cold. The person handing it over even called out for the entire set that it was a cold weapon. The director then immediately called places. Because that’s how it works.
But the gun was not cold.
Now, the person whose job it was to maintain those weapons was incompetent. Baldwin didn’t hire her, he didn’t hire anyone. He was one of 10 producers and mostly handled fundraising and script changes.
But he made fun of Trump a few times, and was involved in a gun death in a Trump friendly area. In California the armorer would be facing these charges, and would have faced them as soon as the initial investigation was over, not several years later.
Source please? Everywhere I’ve read about this it was said that he took a gun to play with it. Not a part of any procedure.
Of course if it was like what you are describing, then I’m wrong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_shooting_incident
Not sure where you got your series of events from
My memory changed it a bit, but thanks for your link, as the quoted part is what I was trying to remember.
Did you miss the part a bit earlier where it said he was handed a gun and told it was cold?
The fact that he was asking questions of the director about how he was going to draw and “fire” the gun is pointless, because everyone on set thought it was cold.
There are a lot of statements quoted. What I quoted was what I remembered reading. Anyway, the fact of what he actually did that was criminal is not being contested by anyone here, it’s that it was criminal, as if responsibility for any action at all can be offloaded via documents signed. That’d be false.
The conservative media outlets have been spreading bullshit about this. They hate Baldwin for making fun of donnie diapers.
Rule 1 of gun safety, check the gun you’re handed for any ammunition.
What else needs to be said?
Everything else is its own issue to be dealt with.
He was given a firearm, did not do HIS due dilligence by checking the gun. He killed a fucking human being. . End of story
Can’t really expect that any more than you expect that Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone personally made sure the paint buckets he swung at Joe Pesci were actually empty. It’s just not how it works.
It’s up to the props people, in this case the armorer.
Youre forgetting the 50 year age difference, I dont expect anyone under the age of 15 to be responsible for setting anything up on a set. It takes 10 seconds to check a gun for blanks vs bullets. Frankly anyone who handles a gun anywhere be it real or have which blanks should know the difference and should check.
This particular model you could not see any bullets so how hard would it be to open the cover and rotate the cylinder 6 times?
Blanks are just as dangerous as real bullets just at different ranges.
Alec has been around guns for how long? And didnt learn basic gun safety?
Íve had to follow safety rules in every job ive been on. Ive uses just about every tool including both air and propane nail guns and the first rule is dont point it at anything tou dont plan on nailing and that has safety to prevent it from firing if not against an object.
So why are actors any different? They get paid a fuckload more then me and dont have to follow safety and often make others do
dangerous shitstunts and dont get salaries or recognition the actors do.I fell asleep. Prop people can handle it
I honestly would not expect a bunch of Californian actors to know that. You’re often not dealing with a crowd of people who grew up hunting or at the range. You’re dealing with people who hire an armorer to bring that expertise to the set.
99% of people who incessantly spout out Da Rules on the Internet have never held a gun in their life, and would be more likely to ND than the average youtube shorts guntuber
Guns arent hard to learn , watch forgotten weapons.
I grew up in fscking Moscow and have never shot one live round, but I know the same rules (because they apply for anything remotely similar, including toy pneumatic guns with which you can leave someone without an eye, construction guns, toy bows and crossbows …).
The armorer is 100% guilty, but that’s not the same as saying that 100% of guilt is on the armorer.
The rules of firearm safety apply when your buddy is showing off his new canik, not when you’re a professional on a movie set. A million other actors have ignored those rules on a million other sets, and it’s typically perfectly safe because the armorers know what they’re doing, and the crew isn’t bringing live rounds on set.
Then the actors shoulnt handle guns
I mean… by this metric Michael Massee should have done time for shooting Brandon Lee during the filming of The Crow.
I thought they were using blanks with Brandon Lee, but there was something with either the distance that it was fired or something messed up with the gun which became a projectile and fatally shot him? The two instances do seem similar but my memory of the events surrounding Brandon Lee’s death was that the blame fell on the prop department and unless the actors were experts, they wouldn’t have known the risk involved.
There’s two types of fake rounds they were using: one that had the bullet but no gunpowder or primer (to look like a realistic bullet in close-ups, since it was a revolver) and the opposite with no bullet but with powder and primer, for scenes with shooting.
They didn’t do the first ones properly and left the primers on. This round was fired, which set off the cap and fired the bullet with just enough force for it to get stuck in the barrel (which is similar diameter as the bullet for rifling). Then, the same gun was loaded with a blank round to use in a scene. It was aimed at Brandon Lee and fired, the force of the powder was enough to dislodge the bullet from the barrel and hit Brandon fatally.
With this particular issue, you can’t just look at the bullets to tell if it’s safe (plus half of the fake rounds looked like real ones anyways), you need to also clear the barrel.
No, there was a rare accident with one blank pushing out a piece of the previous blank stuck or something.
Yeah, the director and editors are gonna love you making sure your props are cleared every single shoot.
“Sure, we’re 15% over budget and two weeks behind schedule, time is tight as hell, but I have to check this firearm that the armorer already verified is cold just in case we’re the third ever fatal ND on a movie set”
If he had, rust would have been in theatres last year…
He is the producer.
Hi hired her. He tolerated crew using real bullets on set for playing target practice during down time.
The boss created unsafe conditions, and killed his employee through negligence.
I find that to be a pretty big leap. When she took the role of armorer she assumed all responsibility on set to ensure the safety of the crew, which was the entire point in Baldwin hiring someone to that position in the first place. Her gross negligence if not outright fraud is a result of her own actions and nobody else.
At most I’d give 20% responsibility to Baldwin for not examining her background more closely.
I completely agree with you that technically the armorer is at fault traditionally in these types of situations and a jury may in fact find that to be true in the eyes of the law eventually, but I find it interesting that in this case the armorer was a younger attractive female on a rough n tumble set and I can only assume there was pressure on her from the other people there shooting if not Baldwin himself to go shooting. Hell she may not have even known the guns were used but that’s not really an excuse.
What is a meditating factor is what Baldwin said, told her and ordered her to do. Remember he’s her boss. I’m assuming there’s evidence he told her to do blah. If so imo he deserves more than 20%.
The way I see it, if your responsibility is the safety of firearms and someone tells you to violate that responsibility, that reflects a lot on you and you’re not cut for the job. If there is a contradiction between what the boss tells you and that which you’re held liable for, you better choose wisely. You’re hired for this role specifically when death is on the line no less.
Why do you think the grand jury, which certainly has seen more evidence than you, felt differently?
The Grand Jury is subject to a narrow perspective of evidence framed solely by the Prosecutors. The bar is pretty low.
If Grand Juries were fullproof, why even proceed to a trial…?
And it’s quite possible I’m missing something, sure. I don’t really have a horse in this race either way.
A grand jury found him guilty! I guess that settles it!
Maybe you shouldn’t comment on things that you don’t know the first thing about
A grand jury will in a ham sandwich
I would still say Baldwin is at fault since he wasn’t doing what he could to ensure safety on the set with real guns and live ammunition. The armorer fucked up 100% for sure, but they shouldn’t be the first and last line for following safety policies and SOPs - anybody in a leadership or managerial role should also be enforcing it.
I find it highly unlikely that a film producer is going around checking weapon props on the vast, vast majority of Hollywood sets. I would be shocked if that ever happens.
People were literally walking off set before the shooting happened because of this exact safety issue. Baldwin knew about the safety issue. He ignored it.
He’s negligent for not firing the negligent armorer the moment he undoubtedly heard about there being live ammo on set.
He doesn’t need to check them, but he can certainly go “hey, make sure we’re following safety protocols!” so others can actually do that work - or at least, Baldwin can cover himself by saying he was trying to follow safety protocol.
You say it’s the armorer’s fault (which it is), but Baldwin still could’ve done more to ensure safety on his end without checking every weapon prop like you said. Ask yourself: if the people in charge don’t follow policy and procedure, do you think the people below them would?
What policy/procedure did Baldwin not follow exactly?
I would hate to work under you. I hope you’re not in charge of anything OSHA related.
Ok. I’d hate to have employees who need convenient scapegoats to deflect their basic job responsibilities for which they were, you know, hired to perform.
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Baldwin was one of 10 producers and was not the hiring director. He, in fact, hire her.
I’ve heard that there were live fire practices on set, but could never back that up.
What I did find the last time this came up was a write-up about how there were reloads intermixed with the dummy rounds, re-loads that had been used on a completely different film shoot, where the actors of that film were walked tough some target practice with live rounds, so that they would better understand how a gun firing live rounds would kick.
Then a coffee can full of mixed live and dummy rounds ended up kicking around for a couple of years before being sent out to the Rust filming location, and the armorer didn’t know how to check the bullets. Or didn’t know that she had to. She was told that everything sent was a dummy round.
There were a bunch of live rounds found mixed into props, including Baldwin’s ammo belt.
All of them looked like the standard dummy round.
real bullets. . .
playing . . .
That’s fucked up.
I find it very hard to understand the attitudes some people have towards firearms.
The thing is, he’s not the one who hired her.
He was one of 10 listed producers on that film, and was not the hiring director.
He’s the one who just took a gun laying nearby (without asking anyone about it being normal), jokingly pointed it at a person and squeezed the trigger.
People defending him seem to think that “criminal stupidity” is not a thing.
This is not accurate. At.all. it’s really funny how much stuff gets repeated online without any evidence. Social media is just one big game of telephone
https://lemmy.zip/comment/6483250 - I meant this.
You are contradicting your own comment.
Put some detail to explain your position, saying that alone is worth nothing.
I would love to see a source on that story, because it sounds super made up
The first article I’ve read on the event. I don’t remember (EDIT: where I’ve seen) it and I won’t provide you with the source.
EDIT2: https://lemmy.zip/comment/6483250 - meant that.
Where exactly in that quote does it say he took a gun laying nearby without asking anyone about it, jokingly pointed it at a person, and squeezed the trigger? Literally none of what you said happened according to that quote. Do you wanna maybe delete the misinformation in your comments?
Are you saying that quote is where you got what you said from? Because it doesn’t say anything like what you said
You’re a liar. You made it up.
I made up the quote? Go on with your life that same way, it’s gonna be amusing.
You don’t have a quote that supports what you said champ
Thats not what happened at all. He was handed a gun and told it was safe.
Um no. That’s a blatant lie.
He was handed a gun, and told it was cold.
People attacking him just make shit up left and right.
Maybe we do, it’s confusing that when somebody points a gun at another person which he hasn’t personally checked and pretends that somebody had to check it instead of him and that absolves him, some people think he’s right.
So, you admit you’re just making shit up to paint Baldwin in a worse light?
You also admit you have no fucking clue how stage and film work?
Because pointing a gun at someone for a film is allowed, because the production hires actual experts who are legally responsible for making sure that any weapon handed to an actor is safe. The armorer in this case was incompetent, and got the job because her father was a damn fine armorer and had connections.
Do note, that while Baldwin was a producer on the film, he was one of 10 producers, and never handled hiring. His main duties were fundraising and minor script changes.
I started with recalling that the accident happened when he was waving the gun for expressiveness. Then my memory went off track, like it often happens, because the general idea of somebody using a real weapon for expressiveness for me is very irresponsible.
That core part turns out to still be correct. The rest not.
Also you are making it sound as if having a real shooting gun on a set at all was so bloody necessary and unavoidable that it doesn’t make sense to teach people holding it basic rules.
See, that’s the first place your memory was wrong. Because that core part is in fact wrong.
He was rehearsing a scene with the director. Asking questions about where to stand and how to draw and aim the gun.
The real gun on set was because it would usually be loaded with blanks.
Period accurate guns didn’t have smokeless powder. So the blanks would be loaded with that same powder.
You also want a real gun for closeup work. There was not supposed to be any live ammo on set, so it should have been safe.
Unfortunately, the armorer was incompetent, and the prop supplier sent dummy rounds that had been co-mingled with live rounds that were produced for a previous film.
OK, makes sense. I’ve been a bit stubborn on this because of the way Americans talk to everyone they suspect of sympathies to the other half of their internal politics.
Do you know his involvement in her being hired? Being a producer can mean anything from total involvement to it just being a name on paper.
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If he’s not lying about not pulling the trigger, then he, or the firearms manager, also bought a dangerously cheap gun.
The whole thing was a cascading failure, imho, with Baldwin at the end of it, making him no less culpable than anyone before him. Ultimately, “I didn’t know the gun was loaded” is never an excuse.
It wasn’t necessarily cheap. It was just a double action revolver.
All of the downvotes are from right wingers brigading.
All that is why he is civilly liable for her wrongful death.
The reason he is criminally liable is because, without bothering to check that the weapon was safe, he elected to point it at a woman and pull the trigger…
If he had blown through a stop sign without bothering to check that the crossroad had been closed, he would be criminally liable for the damages he caused. The fact that cameras were rolling when he did it would not excuse him of his dangerous act.
He failed to take the basic safety precautions expected of anyone handling a firearm, and he failed to introduce alternative measures for achieving the same degree of safety.
And then tried to blame any and everyone but himself afterwards.