Alec Baldwin shoots and kills cinematographer.

GaryM said:
I took that to mean that the armorer is responsible for the gun, exactly as stated. Responsible for secure storage, maintenance, selecting the right one for the scene, etc. But EVERYONE involved is responsible for gun safety. The armorer checks, the actor checks (as Clooney stated), anyone who will be downrange checks (Clooney said he shows it is safe to those people, I'd personally insist on checking myself).
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I know what he said BOTH times and I do believe he's being sincere about everyone being responsible. But he may be giving himself an "out" for later when he says, "The person responsible for the gun is either the prop person or the armorer. Period." Those are his words, no one put them in his mouth.
 
Rushie said:
Hollywood is it’s own worst enemy. With all this emphasis on gun safety, they still relentlessly teach the public that the proper way to hold a gun is to always have your finger on the trigger and be oblivious to which way the muzzle points. People that know nothing about guns, like little kids, or Thomas Binger, absorb what they see over a lifetime of movies and shows. It’s the biggest safety failure related to firearms ever committed.
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Absolutely true. Not just little kids, either, unless you count 20 somethings in that. I've talked with senior LE folks who have had to "un-train" behavior in officers who were doing things in exercises that they learned from TV. Not recruits, but people in the field. Across the board, I don't think people are getting enough of the right training.
 
Albany Tom said:
Absolutely true. Not just little kids, either, unless you count 20 somethings in that. I've talked with senior LE folks who have had to "un-train" behavior in officers who were doing things in exercises that they learned from TV. Not recruits, but people in the field. Across the board, I don't think people are getting enough of the right training.
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For thousands of years, humans have had to pass on knowledge from one generation to the next. For thousands of years, this was done through the medium of story. Why do we think that humans have stopped learning from stories?

I think we need to be careful with the fiction we consume. Sometimes, we take away lessons we never intended to.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
For thousands of years, humans have had to pass on knowledge from one generation to the next. For thousands of years, this was done through the medium of story. Why do we think that humans have stopped learning from stories?

I think we need to be careful with the fiction we consume. Sometimes, we take away lessons we never intended to.
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The lessons are transmitted subconsciously. We know it’s fiction. We know the good guy doesn’t always get the girl in real life. But when the only visual you ever see of a gun in someone’s hand has their finger on the trigger, and you see that thousands of times over years and decades, and no one ever tells you differently, it becomes like a muscle memory without ever needing to practice it. You pick up a gun with the finger bent on the trigger because that’s how the gun is made to fit. You don’t think about it at all, and that’s the problem.
 
I saw a TV show where the actor's finger was not on the trigger the other day.
 
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Salty said:
I’ve never seen a gun on a trigger.
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Trigger-Roy-Rogers-famous-horse.jpg
 
I saw a clip yesterday from an old (he hadn’t gotten, ahem, full bodied yet) John Wayne movie where somebody was pointing a double barreled shotgun at Wayne. Wayne took the gun away and proceeded to literally poke him in the stomach with the shotgun repeatedly. So much for not pointing a gun at people in the movies. I assume it wasn’t loaded/may have been safed in some other way, but definitely pointed in a most harmful place if it had gone off.

I am reasonably confident that that link pointing guns at people) in the gun accident chain is routinely broken in movies, tv shows and music videos. Mostly without bad results. It’s when other links get broken that bad things happen.
 
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jsstevens said:
I saw a clip yesterday from an old (he hadn’t gotten, ahem, full bodied yet) John Wayne movie where somebody was pointing a double barreled shotgun at Wayne. Wayne took the gun away and proceeded to literally poke him in the stomach with the shotgun repeatedly. So much for not pointing a gun at people in the movies. I assume it wasn’t loaded/may have been safed in some other way, but definitely pointed in a most harmful place if it had gone off.

I am reasonably confident that that link pointing guns at people) in the gun accident chain is routinely broken in movies, tv shows and music videos. Mostly without bad results. It’s when other links get broken that bad things happen.
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McClintock
 
jsstevens said:
I saw a clip yesterday from an old (he hadn’t gotten, ahem, full bodied yet) John Wayne movie where somebody was pointing a double barreled shotgun at Wayne. Wayne took the gun away and proceeded to literally poke him in the stomach with the shotgun repeatedly. So much for not pointing a gun at people in the movies. I assume it wasn’t loaded/may have been safed in some other way, but definitely pointed in a most harmful place if it had gone off.

I am reasonably confident that that link pointing guns at people) in the gun accident chain is routinely broken in movies, tv shows and music videos. Mostly without bad results. It’s when other links get broken that bad things happen.
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Guns get pointed at people in movies a lot. There is supposed to be a protocol, where the person getting the gun pointed at them checks the gun along with anyone else in the vicinity has the right to make sure the gun is safe before the scene.

Someone here made an excellent point earlier that had Alec been required to point the gun at his own head and pull the trigger he would not have been so cavalier about it. Maybe that should be a new requirement for scenes where a safe gun is pointed at someone and the trigger pulled. The actor with the gun has to point and pull the trigger at themselves first, before the scene.
 
jsstevens said:
I saw a clip yesterday from an old (he hadn’t gotten, ahem, full bodied yet) John Wayne movie where somebody was pointing a double barreled shotgun at Wayne. Wayne took the gun away and proceeded to literally poke him in the stomach with the shotgun repeatedly. So much for not pointing a gun at people in the movies. I assume it wasn’t loaded/may have been safed in some other way, but definitely pointed in a most harmful place if it had gone off.
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PaulS said:
Guns get pointed at people in movies a lot. There is supposed to be a protocol, where the person getting the gun pointed at them checks the gun along with anyone else in the vicinity has the right to make sure the gun is safe before the scene.

Someone here made an excellent point earlier that had Alec been required to point the gun at his own head and pull the trigger he would not have been so cavalier about it. Maybe that should be a new requirement for scenes where a safe gun is pointed at someone and the trigger pulled. The actor with the gun has to point and pull the trigger at themselves first, before the scene.
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No argument from me. I was responding to a number of posts that there was no reason to ever point a gun at someone unless you were going to shoot them and at least strongly implying that they don’t really do it in movies because camera angles, etc. This clip posted above is not at all ambiguous.

if you’re going to purposely break a link in the accident chain you make very, very sure the others are all intact.
 
More info about this disaster. Turns out someone was reloading dummy shells with live ammo. Can't make this stuff up. Also the armorer.... "The new affidavit quotes Gutierrez Reed as saying that the guns were checked on set, but she “didn’t really check it too much.”" I'm thinking she may not be bright enough to have lawyered up.

'Rust' Investigators Reveal New Details About Source of Live Rounds - Variety
 
PaulS said:
More info about this disaster. Turns out someone was reloading dummy shells with live ammo. Can't make this stuff up. Also the armorer.... "The new affidavit quotes Gutierrez Reed as saying that the guns were checked on set, but she “didn’t really check it too much.”" I'm thinking she may not be bright enough to have lawyered up.

'Rust' Investigators Reveal New Details About Source of Live Rounds - Variety
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wow. Stuff like this is why you don’t ever…ever, ever, ever…point a gun at someone and pull the trigger. Live ammo mixed in with blanks by the person supplying the ammo? What kind of garbage is that?

they weren’t supposed to be firing the gun, which is why the armored hadn’t checked it too closely.

Accident chain theory still applies. Ultimately, proper gun safety could have broken the chain, even with live rounds mixed in.
 
Yep, the ammo supply chain was extremely sloppy, then inadequate or missing checks and rechecks. Definitely a chain of events that could have been broken at a number of places.
 
Talking about "supplying" the ammo, I have to ask, "Who was responsible for supplying appropriate ammunition to the set of Rust if not the armorer?" That kind of mixing does not happen in store bought ammo or from factories. Someone was responsible for ensuring that blank ammunition on set. If that same person brought live (non-blank) ammunition, that is gross incompetence. If a third party brought live ammo on set and this was known by the ammo supplier (for the set), that again shows gross incompetence. If this was done behind the supplier's back, malice becomes a possibility.

Either way, being lax in checking the firearms on set is incompetent, lazy, and shows a lack of maturity on the part of the armorer.
 
MauleSkinner said:
And/or a willingness to take the fall for whatever reason.
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Like in other high profile cases, some unknown worker will be willing to take the fall, for a very large amount of money, and none of this will make the news.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
Talking about "supplying" the ammo, I have to ask, "Who was responsible for supplying appropriate ammunition to the set of Rust if not the armorer?"
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In this case, a man named Seth Kenney, who was the weapons expert who supplied the ammo. Apparently, he reloaded some casings that had the same brand marking as the blanks. Later they got mixed together.

Of the three people I know to be involved, the armorer is the one I see is least responsible. Kenney reloaded rounds and got them confused, Baldwin disregarded safety rules by 1) picking up a gun that wasn't supposed to be used, 2) trusting someone unqualified who told it him was "cold", 3) cocking it, 4) pointing it at a person, and 5) pulling the trigger. The armorer trusted people to follow the rules. But she is probably the one who will be hung out to dry.
 
bflynn said:
Of the three people I know to be involved, the armorer is the one I see is least responsible. Kenney reloaded rounds and got them confused, Baldwin disregarded safety rules by 1) picking up a gun that wasn't supposed to be used, 2) trusting someone unqualified who told it him was "cold", 3) cocking it, 4) pointing it at a person, and 5) pulling the trigger. The armorer trusted people to follow the rules. But she is probably the one who will be hung out to dry.
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I would say they are jointly responsible for the bad outcome.

As for the armorer, its really a 'you had one job' issue*. If you dont know how to source and recongize the correct blanks and dummies from a commercial supplier of theatrical props, you have no business signing up for that job, doesn't matter who your daddy is.

Same for the AD who was supposedly in charge of set safety. If that is your job, maybe you need to supervise an inexperienced staff member to make sure that the prop guns get loaded from a box of commercially made dummies, not a grab-bag of random reloads.

Yes, ultimately it was Baldwin who failed to double-check the the shoddy work of the three people who came before him, but in the end, the responsibility falls on all of them.



* yes, I know, she also did props, but for the job description of armorer, he job was to make sure for a cold gun not to go 'bang' and for a hot one to do so.
 
bflynn said:
Apparently, he reloaded some casings that had the same brand marking as the blanks.
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Just to make sure I understand you, Mr. Kenney hand reloaded some ammunition using the same brass as the blanks he supplied? And he brought these live rounds on set?

Did he do this with or without the armorer's knowledge/permission?

Were the people on set only looking at the headstamps to determine if the rounds were blank? Is that the only thing they examined?
 
weilke said:
I would say they are jointly responsible for the bad outcome.

As for the armorer, its really a 'you had one job' issue*. If you dont know how to source and recongize the correct blanks and dummies from a commercial supplier of theatrical props, you have no business signing up for that job, doesn't matter who your daddy is.

Same for the AD who was supposedly in charge of set safety. If that is your job, maybe you need to supervise an inexperienced staff member to make sure that the prop guns get loaded from a box of commercially made dummies, not a grab-bag of random reloads.

Yes, ultimately it was Baldwin who failed to double-check the the shoddy work of the three people who came before him, but in the end, the responsibility falls on all of them.



* yes, I know, she also did props, but for the job description of armorer, he job was to make sure for a cold gun not to go 'bang' and for a hot one to do so.
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I think, if what the article and bflynn said turn out to be true, she could not have been able to tell if the ammo was live or not.

I still have trouble with the report that Baldwin, the director and the deceased were in a heated argument a couple hours before. If that is true, then I wonder what was going through Baldwin's head when he pulled the gun, pointed it at her, then pulled the trigger. I don't think he shot her on purpose, but having any gun pulled and pointed at you is an intimidating thing if you have half a brain. I wonder if it was an F/U moment for Baldwin that turned tragic.
 
PaulS said:
I think, if what the article and bflynn said turn out to be true, she could not have been able to tell if the ammo was live or not.
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Then she should have treated it as live ammo and the gun as hot.

Dummy rounds need to have a hole in the wall of the case. A dummy round is not the same as a blank round. There is no reason whatsoever that any firearm on that set needed to be capable of firing live ammunition. Period.
 
PaulS said:
I think, if what the article and bflynn said turn out to be true, she could not have been able to tell if the ammo was live or not.
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My understanding of 'industry standard' is that a dummy has a dimpled primer and contains metal beebee's. The way to check is to shake the round and listen for the rattling metal beebee, and of course to look for the primer. A live round with a dimpled primer is a dud and definitely not something you want in a 'cold' gun.
 
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