Alec Baldwin shoots and kills cinematographer.

OneCharlieTango said:
The way some people on this thread apparently think, even if it said "blanks," an actor would still be obligated to mic the cylinder and open and repack every round personally.

It'll be interesting to see what the political fallout of this is. . . .
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That would be a bit extreme.

I think it would have been sufficient for Baldwin to put the muzzle in his mouth first and pull the trigger six times to ensure the gun was incapable of injuring someone else.
 
OneCharlieTango said:
If I understood Dan Millican correctly, the dummy rounds they use in a revolver on set are made from actual rounds, which the armorer pulls apart, empties of powder, and reassembles.

If that’s true, how could Baldwin have known whether a given round was capable of firing?
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You can instantly spot the live primer, if you bother to check the chambers. It takes maybe 4 or 5 seconds with a single-action revolver to check all six chambers. There are a lot of people who would give anything right now to have those four or five seconds back for a proper safety check. Good practice, as noted here before, would also involve painting the cases a bright color and drilling a hole in the side of the case to make dummy rounds easier to identify when out of the gun.

There are good reasons, for some scenes, to have bullets or bullet look-alikes in the dummy cartridges. Lets hope this incident spurs the market for balsa bullets. When viewed from the front, it's obvious if a revolver is loaded (well, it is for those chambers on either side of the frame) because you can see the bullets. Too many bad westerns have a dramatic conclusion where someone pulls a six-shooter with four chambers obviously empty, then cocks the piece (which rotates the cylinder) revealing that the other two chambers are also empty.
 
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Half Fast said:
Not at all. But think about it - if an actor isn't willing to do that, should he be willing to point the gun at someone else and pull the trigger?
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Or maybe a new protocol - when the armorer says the weapon is "cold" the actor points the gun at the armorer and pulls the trigger. I'd bet it would make armorers much more careful.....
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Wonder why blanks are as powerful as they are. All you're really looking for is a muzzle flash and some recoil I suppose.
Couldn't you create that with a Black-cat firework amount of gun powder?
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Muzzle flash easy to do in post with CGI.
 
GaryM said:
You can instantly spot the live primer, if you bother to check the chambers. It takes maybe 4 or 5 seconds with a single-action revolver to check all six chambers.
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Considering the range of gun expertise that might be involved in a pack 'o actors working on a movie set (some of them probably never handled a gun before), it might be a better idea to have a gun expert there to perform this inspection and verify the weapon is correctly loaded for the scene to come.

Oh, wait. That's what they (supposedly) had.

If *I* were an actor (ha!) involved, I'd certainly perform my own inspection. But even with the ragged exposure to firearms I've had over the years, I'm probably more experienced that many of the actors who end up using them on movie sets. Damn straight, I'd want a professional monitoring and controlling gun use on any set I'd end up on. And damn straight, it's the fault of the producers (Baldwin being one of them) that this process failed.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Half Fast said:
Or maybe a new protocol - when the armorer says the weapon is "cold" the actor points the gun at the armorer and pulls the trigger. I'd bet it would make armorers much more careful.....
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Guns are never to be pointed at humans, unless you wouldn't mind that human becoming a meat bag.
 
BladeSlap said:
I won’t watch

These days the CGI everything is annoying and a substitute for creativity

Compare the old alien and Jurassic park to the new stuff, that old rubber and silicone of the 90s and even 80s still looks better than the CGI all the things we have today.

CGI is great for small touch ups, but if I want CGI everything I’ll just watch video games.
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The yellow jeep being tumbled was entirely CGI. All the dinos running/flying flocks were CGI. Lots more than you might think. I teach this stuff.
 
As much fun as it is to jump on the anti-Baldwin bandwagon, at the end of the day the armorer is the person that has one grand responsibility, to make sure the firearms on set are prepped for use and not loaded with live rounds. That person screwed up and allowed live ammunition on the set, and to make its way into a set piece, then allowed someone to use that weapon.

The standards should be such that the armorer is the only person allowed to handle their firearms on set except for the actors during filming. The armorer should not allow nor tolerate live ammo being on set or any where near their equipment. The armorer should not tolerate any horseplay with their equipment. They are not toys, they are not entertainment for the staff, and should not be treated as such. Does the pyro guy let people play with his explosives? Does the camera guy let others play with his cameras? I would say on-set armorers should be trained, licensed, and certified for what they do. They have a serious job. It does not sound like this particular one took the job very seriously, or even knew what they were supposed to be doing.
 
Half Fast said:
That would be a bit extreme.

I think it would have been sufficient for Baldwin to put the muzzle in his mouth first and pull the trigger six times to ensure the gun was incapable of injuring someone else.
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Half Fast said:
Not at all. But think about it - if an actor isn't willing to do that, should he be willing to point the gun at someone else and pull the trigger?
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Half Fast said:
Or maybe a new protocol - when the armorer says the weapon is "cold" the actor points the gun at the armorer and pulls the trigger. I'd bet it would make armorers much more careful.....
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Provocative statements for sure, but if your responsibility is to vouch that a weapon absolutely will not fire, you should be very comfortable with each of these steps.
 
How many westerns did the Duke, John Ford and hundreds of other actors, producers et al make in the history of Hollywood? How many times did they point guns at one another and pull the trigger? I don't recall any of those productions leading to an accidental death such as this. All that history tells me the movie production culture of gun safety is pretty strong and well established.

To state the obvious, something in this production was broken.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
What if he thought it was an elephant?
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Well, I don't think anyone would believe that one could confuse a pistol with an elephant. But if Alec really didn't know it was a real gun, and he had the expectation that it was just a replica, and he was never supposed to have been handed a real pistol, doesn't that change his culpability? Maybe it's still negligent, but I mean under the involuntary manslaughter statute.
 
Baldwins father was a High School Rifle Team instructor and himself discharged from the Marines after being shot accidentally on a range…this just keeps getting stranger and more Ironic coming from a family that taught gun safety…
 
OneCharlieTango said:
If I understood Dan Millican correctly, the dummy rounds they use in a revolver on set are made from actual rounds, which the armorer pulls apart, empties of powder, and reassembles.
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That's how Brandon Lee was killed. If they continue to do that, rather than using professionally made dummy rounds, it would indicate an epic level of stupid.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
How many westerns did the Duke, John Ford and hundreds of other actors, producers et al make in the history of Hollywood? How many times did they point guns at one another and pull the trigger? I don't recall any of those productions leading to an accidental death such as this. All that history tells me the movie production culture of gun safety is pretty strong and well established.
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In a previous posting, I mentioned that many of the actors in the '40s-'70s were veterans, who probably had been taught proper gun safety.

In addition, we may not know how many accidental discharges, injuries, or even deaths occurred. The Hollywood studio system had a lock on government back then, and studios excelled in hushing-up bad press. If John Wayne *had* inadvertently shot someone, they would have ensured it was reported as someone else holding the gun or "suicide," depending on how well-known the victim was.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
1. Baldwin was not a professional gun user.
2. He was handed a gun by the person on the set responsible for ensuring the gun prop was safe.
3. He was assured by the person in charge of arming him that the gun was safe to use.
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This has been covered already, but Baldwin has been handling guns in movies for decades. He received training and a safety briefing on every single one of those films. They all followed protocols. Even if Baldwin has never in his life been in the same room with a firearm off set, 1) he is, in fact, a "professional gun user," 2) he knows that he is responsible for assuring a gun on set is safe, and 3) it doesn't matter what anyone tells him.

Also, the AD is not, "the person in charge of arming him," and Baldwin knows that as well.

Baldwin is expert enough in this that if standard safety protocols were not being followed on this set, he would have been aware of it because it would have been a change from every other film he's worked on. He's not fresh off the turnip truck from Kansas.
 
OneCharlieTango said:
If I understood Dan Millican correctly, the dummy rounds they use in a revolver on set are made from actual rounds, which the armorer pulls apart, empties of powder, and reassembles.

If that’s true, how could Baldwin have known whether a given round was capable of firing?

It’s a film set; not a firing range.
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Dan Millican? Thats the method that killed Brandon Lee. The primer was left intact and had enough force to push the bullet into the barrel and get stuck. Sometime later Lee puts a single blank into the gun to play Russian Roulette and the blank had enough force to push the bullet the rest of the way out into Lee's head.
I agree with your point in that there might be no practical way to know until the trigger is pulled.


Kenny Phillips said:
If Baldwin (or anyone handling an actual firearm, "cold" or not) hadn't been told to never, ever point it at people, I'd be quite surprised. That would be another link in the chain.
BTW, my favorite gun store has a big bucket of sand, for pointing "unloaded" guns into when pulling the trigger. Pretty good insurance.
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Again, its a movie set.
We don't know the shot set-up but it may have been the wounded AD that said " right at me, no aim higher, more to the left, now..."
My local shop has more than one sign that reads DO NOT BRING LOADED WEAPONS INSIDE- CHECK YOUR GUNS OUTSIDE, DO NOT REMOVE YOUR LOADED GUN FROM ITS HOLSTER, and I have seen similar elsewhere, they have a Bucket 'O Shame full of all kinds of rounds from guns people have brought in and handed to the clerks.
 
Robert Gee said:
Dan Millican? Thats the method that killed Brandon Lee. The primer was left intact and had enough force to push the bullet into the barrel and get stuck. Sometime later Lee puts a single blank into the gun to play Russian Roulette and the blank had enough force to push the bullet the rest of the way out into Lee's head.
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I think there were 2 separate incidents: one where a TV actor shot himself in he head with a blank and killed himself, and the Lee death. In the Lee case a dummy round had a live primer and the trigger was pulled either during a rehearsal or a live scene. The force of the primer pushed the bullet into the barrel. Later, blanks were loaded and all procedures were followed to ensure they really were blanks, but nobody verified the barrel was clear. Lee walked into the scene during a take and another actor shot him.
 
What if Brigade Commander;
What if when the AD said "cold gun" it was a command to Alec that he was not to pull the trigger yet as they were still framing the shot.
Some blank firing guns have a device that partially plugs the barrel so the powder more fully burns before it exits the barrel. Some are interchangeable depending on the desired look for the camera. Some blanks are loaded with more powder than a regular round for more effect. What if a hot blank shot out a muzzle device?
 
Matthew said:
I think there were 2 separate incidents: one where a TV actor shot himself in he head with a blank and killed himself, and the Lee death. In the Lee case a dummy round had a live primer and the trigger was pulled either during a rehearsal or a live scene. The force of the primer pushed the bullet into the barrel. Later, blanks were loaded and all procedures were followed to ensure they really were blanks, but nobody verified the barrel was clear. Lee walked into the scene during a take and another actor shot him.
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Ok, and thanks. I see now I conflated the two.
 
wanttaja said:
In a previous posting, I mentioned that many of the actors in the '40s-'70s were veterans, who probably had been taught proper gun safety.

In addition, we may not know how many accidental discharges, injuries, or even deaths occurred. The Hollywood studio system had a lock on government back then, and studios excelled in hushing-up bad press. If John Wayne *had* inadvertently shot someone, they would have ensured it was reported as someone else holding the gun or "suicide," depending on how well-known the victim was.

Ron Wanttaja
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True then, but a lot of secrets about that era have come out by now...I doubt if somebody got killed in this manner on a set then it would still be a secret now.
 
Robert Gee said:
Some blank firing guns have a device that partially plugs the barrel so the powder more fully burns before it exits the barrel.
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That does not apply here; the gun involved in this shooting was a revolver. Guns with restricted barrels are gas-operated semi-automatic firearms. When firing blanks, the barrel needs a restriction so that enough pressure is developed to operate the action. A revolver barrel should NEVER have an obstruction, since, as already noted, a following round (even a blank) can force the obstruction out and hurt someone. (Or the gun could blow up outright.) In any event, Lindberg is right IMHO. Baldwin was experienced enough that even though he is personally completely inept with a gun he should know enough to ask "Hey--aren't you supposed to show me that this thing is unloaded?"

Tim
 
PPC1052 said:
Well, I don't think anyone would believe that one could confuse a pistol with an elephant. But if Alec really didn't know it was a real gun, and he had the expectation that it was just a replica, and he was never supposed to have been handed a real pistol, doesn't that change his culpability? Maybe it's still negligent, but I mean under the involuntary manslaughter statute.
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Sure. The likelihood of that being the case is about as likely as thinking it was an elephant.
 
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