Alec Baldwin accidentally kills crew member with prop gun

LA Times
Halyna Hutchins' husband hires L.A. law firm specializing in wrongful-death suits

INSIDER
'Rust' armorer's lawyers said the gun that killed Halyna Hutchins was left unattended for hours, then backtracked and said it was only 5 to 10 minutes

by the way, nothing of a mystery about who is responsible on the death of a worker in a cheap budget production there!

at least, i am not confused on this dirty matter. right, y***!!!!!

Yahoo Movies
Dwayne Johnson says he'll no longer use real guns on his company's sets following the 'Rust' tragedy

i think that to play safe the action movies should use baseball bats and wooden sticks as weapons during violent scenes
HARLEY QUINN rules !!!!!

What I don't understand is, what's the point of loading a pistol with dummy rounds, when the camera cannot see through a gun? Since the audience is just going to see the outside anyway, they won't know if dummy rounds are in it or not, so what would be the point?

Yahoo Celebrity
'Rust' shooting: Alec Baldwin is 'hurting himself in unimaginable ways,' says crisis PR expert

how cheap can Alec Baldwin be?!
not hiring a PR man to protect his image?
not hiring a lawyer to protect him from unavoidable lawsuits?

A B = stupid man

It's not as much of a wild assumption as a worthwhile speculation. Organized crime has long been interested in movie productions, and, the movie in question seems like a loser to me. Given the variables of a gunshot "accident", what the movie may have needed (to a disgruntled investor) is an end that doesn't cost anything; death was an accident. I won't claim evidence for this, but it's worth pursuing. The "truth" is not all that convincing and the accident theory (that real bullets were on the set and in the gun because someone was target shooting) seems pretty lame to me. I'm probably wrong, but this is such a strange story.

The 'basis' for most conspiracy theories is the human need to believe.

Link
Just because one doesn't know all the facts doesn't mean outside forces have to be evoked to explain a chain of mistakes that lead to a tragedy. It's OK for a person to say, I don't know. And I don't know what happened on the set of Rust.

But it's not hard to believe that either A) the weapons master, who had been target practicing with the prop gun using live ammo, brought the loaded gun and ammo into the set to unload the gun, but left one bullet in the chamber by mistake. *EDIT: It's been stated that crew members used the gun for target practice and that the weapons master denies having any knowledge that the gun was used for target practice.

Or B) perhaps the real ammo was on the set as it was going to be filmed for a scene, someone then mistakenly thought they were fake bullets and loaded one into the gun.

Fingerprinting and DNA analyze from the bullets might shed light on who was to blame as well as eye witness testimony.

The thing that I actively do not like about the theories of sabotage being floated around (including the implication from Gutierrez-Reed's camp that maybe one of the crew who walked off due to safety issues was the one of brought and loaded the live round), is that it conveniently deflects blame. And, frankly, it doesn't make anyone actually look better.

Suppose you are an investor in this film--tell me again how destroying the production helps you? It means that the film will never make a profit. And the negligence on set might even mean that there won't be insurance payouts. If you're an investor, don't you want to get the film finished so you have at least a chance at a return on your investment?

Suppose you are a crew member who is upset about lax safety. Are you really going to intentionally put a loaded gun on that set, knowing it could be fatal to one of your co-workers (including a child character who was in the film)?

And even if there was some element of intentional harm (ie someone got to the prop table and put a live round in the prop gun), that gun still went through "checks" by both Gutierrez-Reed and Halls before it got into the scene that was being rehearsed.

Again: it boggles my mind that any crew member was comfortable putting live rounds into a weapon they knew would be used in a scene in a film. (Was Gutierrez-Reed among those doing this target practice?). The most likely series of events, for me, is that someone was playing with the gun and failed to unload it when done. Gutierrez-Reed, when loading the gun with blanks, either did not notice the round or (if she was unaware it had been used for target practice between takes) assumed it was also a blank. Then the gun went to Halls, whose check was also cursory enough that he didn't notice the live round.

The real question is: who brought live rounds to this set? Because even if you want to believe that alien lizards working for the mob or a psychopath disgruntled camera operator loaded that gun, faking such an "accident" simply doesn't work unless there are actual bullets around.

Good post Takoma, with valid arguments against why sabotage by outside forces or disgruntled crew would be unlikely. I agree.

My mistake, in my post I referred to GR as doing target practice, but according to my older post based on a news story it was unnamed crew members using the gun for target practice with live ammo.

My older post:

While I ultimately believe that Gutierrez-Reed and Halls bear most of the blame, I think it makes a difference to know if:

1) Gutierrez-Reed was the person who brought live rounds to the set
2) She was one of the crew who participated in using prop guns for fun with live rounds (whether she did it on the day of the shooting or on previous days)
3) She (or Halls) was aware that the guns were being loaded with live rounds by others for fun

Any or all of the above means that Gutierrez-Reed and/or Halls giving only a cursory look at the weapon is even more negligent than I'd previously thought.

I didn't think the investors would want to risk ruining their own film and figured that the sabotage would have to be committed by a disgruntled lower rank in the production. But if it was sabotage, the person would have to have brought a the live rounds themselves and mixed them in, rather than rely on them already being there, wouldn't they?

I've not been around firearms much in my life, but I've seen some really dumb stuff go on at work, by people who know better. Like the guy that got shrink-wrapped to a forklift blade and then lifted 20 feet in the air as a "prank". The ring-leader of this incident was the warehouse supervisor, a forklift-certified guy well into his 40s, who was sitting next to me when we had to watch the safety-training video of horrific forklift injuries. The idea that a crew full of professionals got lazy or were distracted or complacent is far more believable than the sabotage thing.

__________________
Captain's Log
My Collection

It's not just the psychological need for cognitive closure (especially that closure which fits in our preferred world-view), but also the sociological pressure to provide alternative explanations. If you say, "Hey, that's not what really happened," then the rejoinder will be, "Oh really? What really happened, smart guy?" And then we're off to the races. And we should note that the person who raises suspicion is often unfairly called upon to provide a detailed account so as to prove the case.

An important habit in B.S. detection is to avoid the rush to pure speculation, no matter now much you think is apparent or how much you are pressed to provide an alternative account.

For example, I don't believe Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone nut. Something was rotten in Dallas. Something still is. President Biden just delayed release of secret files because “temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jfk-ass...d-white-house/

Why would he do this if Oswald did it all by his lonesome almost 60 years ago? I don't know what is in those files. I have to theory of the case to sell in terms "cracking the case." However, I think that a reasonable person of goodwill looking at the available evidence can conclude that there was some plot to kill the president. The Who and the Why and the How, however, are blanks that we must resist the temptation and pressure to fill in.

Establishing the likelihood that a crime has been committed from looking at what appears to be a crime scene is much easier than solving the crime by just looking at the crime scene or crime scene photos.

So why do we so often rush in to fill-in the blanks? Well, that is because part of what makes us judge or suspect that an occurrence was "foul play" has to do with speculations about intentions of agents in the vicinity (e.g., Means, Motive, and Opportunity). That is, we suspect the husband of foul play because he took out a massive insurance policy on his wife a few months ago - the explanation of Why is part of the establishment of the What - (Crime or Accident?, Fish our Fowl?). Thus our categories bleed into each other and justify each other, so it is very hard to simply legislate "don't ever fill in the blanks of Who or Why" when we have this sort of overlap. And again, we often encourage this/normalize this by demanding details and a mature theory at an early stage of the dialogue (EX: "Oh, so you think that this was murder? OK, who did? Why did they do it? How did they escape detection?" to which our detective should mere say, "We just arrived at the scene, we're actually going to have to do police work to answer your questions.") Again, it is an error in the sequence of analysis to demand that proof that a crime was committed be established by way of a complete solution of that crime.
Thus, my rule has to be revised to state something like, "Only speculate about that which you have evidence establishing respectable probability." And something like, "Only fill in the blanks tentatively, with only as much concreteness and certainty as is reasonable. I think that this is still reasonable. There is still a large difference between saying


and saying

I'd like to know the answer to all that too. I haven't been following this real close, but I believe Hannah Gutierrez-Reed (think I'll call her Hannah Montana for short!)...has sworn a statement that she hadn't participated in using the gun for target practice and had no previous knowledge that the gun was used for that purpose. Doesn't mean she can't be lying, especially on the point of not knowing the gun had been used in target practice. Though if there were eyewitnesses that seen her target practice, then I'd think that would come out in the investigation.

I'm very curious as to why live rounds where on the set? Someone in the production team must know the answer to that.

Crazy stunt with the forklift! And good point, people are lazy and stupid...and even smart careful people can still make mistakes.

There is also the interview with Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's attorneys who went on TV to try to defend her but they end making her look worse in the process because they get caught in their own holes in the case.

However, is it just me, but isn't it a bad idea, for attorneys of an accused to do TV interviews on the risk that they may incriminate their clients further or at least risk making them look more guilty? Is it even standard legal practice do that, since it can taint a jury pool if everyone sees such an interview?

This would be SUCH a foolish lie to tell, as it would so easily fall apart by just one person being like "Oh, yeah, she came shooting with us that one time."

Agreed. Someone purchased them. Someone brought them physically to the site of the filming. And more about what it means that they were "on set." There's a big difference between being on set in the sense that they were, for example, in someone's vehicle, or being on set in the sense that they were on a prop table mixed in with blanks.

I'm not much on conspiracy theories, but I do worry about sequences of improbable events. Having been around guns in some of my life, I do know that it's not hard to see when a gun is loaded, especially a wild west six shooter. Any reasonable person would check for themselves prior to deliberately aiming and shooting at someone else. If blanks were to be used, they are clearly distinguishable from real bullets as well as not without danger themselves and, again, any reasonable person would want to be sure that they are doing it right so nobody gets hurt. There's no reason to have prop bullets inside the gun, so making a mistake and putting in real bullets doesn't hold up real well either. There seems to be a chain of ineptitude here and I can see how everybody is trying to craft a story where they're not to blame.

My contention about a "wrecker" is not about someone who wanted to shoot a particular individual, so much as someone who wanted to create a problem that would shut down the production, which apparently was not going well. Unfortunately, my wrecker theory stumbles on the fact that several people handled the gun and nobody noticed, up to and including Baldwin. I'm baffled as to what conclusion to draw. It's like Murder on the Orient Express, where everybody has a part in the murder.

Based on the fact that this production already had misfire with their weapons AND that Halls had weapons issues (including an injury) on his previous films AND a reputation for cutting corners on safety, it doesn't seem all that improbable that a prop gun was only given a cursory check before it got into an actor's hands.

There were meant to be blanks in the gun. Guttierez-Reed and Halls had the responsibility to make sure that they were loaded correctly. They didn't.

This would be an improbable-almost-impossible outcome if the armorer and the AD were doing their job correctly. They weren't.

I just don't see where there's a conspiracy here. Maybe if the gun was left on a table, everyone cleared the room for some reason, then they came in and Baldwin picked the weapon up off of the table. What happened instead was that the gun was on a table supposedly having been cleared by Guttierez-Reed. Halls then got the weapon and opened it up and declared that it was safe and ready for use. Unless you're alleging either Guttierez-Reed or Halls as the person who supposedly is committing this sabotage, the idea doesn't make any sense. Heck, I don't think it makes any sense anyway. Who benefits from this horrible incident?

I read somewhere that the gun was loaded with prop bullets so the camera cannot see that the gun was empty, by seeing through the cylinder holes.

So they had to load it with dummy bullets to sell that effect. So they thought it was loaded with dummies because of that when they checked.

Right, this theory only makes sense in hindsight, because someone has died and therefore the supposed "plot" was "successful". But it's a terrible plan for sabotaging a film. Even assuming that someone is evil enough to be willing to sacrifice a life in order to get their investment back or whatever the theory is, why would anyone choose this method, given all the variables? What if someone checks the gun? What if the gun doesn't discharge? What if it does discharge but doesn't hit anything important? It's a dumb plan.

It's like poisoning a bottle of water that you're not sure anyone is even going to drink from.