Alec Baldwin accidentally kills crew member with prop gun

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An elementary rule of handling firearms is to never point it at anyone whether you think it's loaded of not. It makes no difference. It's just common sense.
Of course, I agree, I own guns. But the makers of movies do it ALL the time, that's a fact.



I continue to be really uncomfortable with the idea that Baldwin should have opened the gun, and that he's negligent for not having done so.

If a parent takes their child to the doctor and the child is prescribed a medication, and they give the child that medicine, and it later turns out that the pharmacist put the wrong pills in the bottle, is the parent legally negligent for not having checked the pills (ie by googling what the medicine should look like?). My gut says no. If two different people, one of whom is a professional, have told you that something is safe, I don't think it's negligent to not check for yourself.

It's horrifying to me that real ammunition was allowed anywhere near this set. To me, that is the negligence here. (That and the armorer AND the AD both saying they checked the gun when clearly they didn't.)



An elementary rule of handling firearms is to never point it at anyone whether you think it's loaded of not. It makes no difference. It's just common sense.
This is true, but at the same time actors are expected to point guns at people as part of their job. Obviously only under controlled circumstances, but they do routinely violate commonsense safety rules.



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
Is it easy for a layperson to distinguish between a live round and a dummy?

This video explains the difference between a live round and a dummy round.

I think the most important line in the video is, "If you can't tell the difference between dummy rounds and live rounds, maybe you should assume that they're live rounds."


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Ghouls, vampires, werewolves... let's party.
Of course, I agree, I own guns. But the makers of movies do it ALL the time, that's a fact.
It's also a fact that Halyna Hutchins is dead. Baldwin should go to prison for his careless actions. Actors are not above the law. There's nothing special about them.



If he's being charged because of his role as a producer, what of the other producers?
I don't definitively know, as a case could be made that all the producers were jointly responsible for allowing an unsafe environment to be fostered on the set, but I think the reason the other producers were not charged is because their actions were indirectly responsible for the death. In contrast, Baldwin and the armorer were more directly responsible. With Baldwin, not only was he indirectly responsible as a producer due to the lax security protocols on the set, which were not resolved, incidents of which he likely was aware due to his producer role, but he was also actually the one who fired the gun that killed Hutchins. The armorer was also more directly responsible. Had she checked the gun before it was handed to Baldwin, which was her responsibility as an armorer, she would have realized there were live rounds in the gun, it wouldn't have been given to Baldwin to be used in the scene, and that would have directly prevented the death from occurring. Similarly, Halls, who pled down his charge, was the one who handed Baldwin the gun. This reinforces my rationale about who was charged, who was not, and why.



Ghouls, vampires, werewolves... let's party.
Alec Baldwin formally charged with involuntary manslaughter

Alec Baldwin and Rust set armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have been formally charged with involuntary manslaughter, the Santa Fe District Attorney announced today, per The Los Angeles Times. Baldwin was also charged with “an enhancement for the use of a firearm”—if he’s found guilty, the charge comes with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.

https://www.avclub.com/alec-baldwin-...ter-1850052756



@Mesmerized thanks for posting that. I hope you or others will update this thread as new developments in the case comes along or as opinion from movie industry or legal types are made public.



Ghouls, vampires, werewolves... let's party.
@Mesmerized thanks for posting that. I hope you or others will update this thread as new developments in the case comes along or as opinion from movie industry or legal types are made public.
You're welcome. I just saw it on the news and decided to look it up on the internet.



If a parent takes their child to the doctor
Baldwin is not a child. He is an adult. Any adult handling a real gun has real responsibilities, as does any adult who operates a motor vehicle. No one is a "sin eater" or stands in loco parentis of the immediate responsibilities of an adult in such a circumstance.

Baldwin has been handling guns in film sets for decades. Ignorance is not an excuse, but Baldwin would not even have the excuse of ignorance here. As a professional working with dangerous weapons on film sets for decades, he should know the rules of safe handling and follow them.

and the child is prescribed a medication, and they give the child that medicine, and it later turns out that the pharmacist put the wrong pills in the bottle, is the parent legally negligent for not having checked the pills (ie by googling what the medicine should look like?). My gut says no. If two different people, one of whom is a professional, have told you that something is safe, I don't think it's negligent to not check for yourself.
In that case, you should never handle a gun. You have outsourced all of your responsibility to the person who told you it was safe. If you cannot make your self responsible for the basic, simple, and practical rules of the safe handling of "X," then you should never handle X.

It's horrifying to me that real ammunition was allowed anywhere near this set. To me, that is the negligence here. (That and the armorer AND the AD both saying they checked the gun when clearly they didn't.)
Negligence is not an either/or situation. There is plenty of room for blame. The charges appear to be reasonable. It is up to a jury to decide. Rich people have the best lawyers, so he has a very good chance of walking away free. He is in less danger of facing justice here than you would be if you negligently killed another human being.



Alec Baldwin formally charged with involuntary manslaughter

Alec Baldwin and Rust set armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have been formally charged with involuntary manslaughter, the Santa Fe District Attorney announced today, per The Los Angeles Times. Baldwin was also charged with “an enhancement for the use of a firearm”—if he’s found guilty, the charge comes with a mandatory minimum sentence of five years.

https://www.avclub.com/alec-baldwin-...ter-1850052756
My guess is that Gutierrez-Reed will get the worst of it. She was not only the armorer, but reportedly they were fooling around with shooting live rounds near the movie set.

She may get some time, whereas Baldwin may only get fined and community service. At any rate, career wise it'll be tough for G-R to get work in the future. I don't know if it'll affect Baldwin getting work or not. Doubt it.



My guess is that Gutierrez-Reed will get the worst of it. She was not only the armorer, but reportedly they were fooling around with shooting live rounds near the movie set.

She may get some time, whereas Baldwin may only get fined and community service. At any rate, career wise it'll be tough for G-R to get work in the future. I don't know if it'll affect Baldwin getting work or not. Doubt it.

If Polanski didn't crater after his controversies, Baldwin will probably be fine.



For what that’s worth, the below all sound reasonable to me. The first three are significant. If he skipped training (on the grounds of being a pacifist, I imagine), then that doesn’t look good.

In a statement of probable cause of Hutchins's death, the Santa Fe District Attorney listed several problems with Baldwin's conduct.

They said:


Baldwin was not present for required firearms training

After failing to show up to this training, he received a 30-minute on-set training during which he was distracted talking to his family on the phone

He exhibited "reckless behaviour" in the lead up to Hutchins's death

He had pointed the firearm at Hutchins in the lead up to the incident violating gun safety rules

Baldwin had not performed the required safety checks with Gutierrez-Reed

He broke protocol by letting Gutierrez-Reed leave the church set

He did not deal with safety complaints on set

He did not use a replica firearm for the unscheduled rehearsal

He allowed the hiring of Gutierrez-Reed, who had worked on just one production before the movie, which showed he "failed to demand the minimum safety standards, protocols, and requirements on set"

The District Attorney also said that on the day of the shooting, there were "no less than a dozen acts, or omissions of recklessness" on the set before the incident, not including the actor's handling of the gun.
https://news.sky.com/story/amp/alec-...m-set-12799967

However, I did also find this interesting, and Sky doesn’t provide a source:

Industry-wide firearms safety guidelines instruct actors to assume a firearm is loaded with blanks and rely on professional weapons handlers to ensure a weapon is safe.
That still seems rather… counter-intuitive.



"Honor is not in the Weapon. It is in the Man"
Criminal charges against Alec Baldwin have been dropped, but not for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed
https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/crimin...rust-shooting/
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"I wonder how it must feel to wrongfully kill someone..."

Well, Alec now you not only know, but you know what it feels like to get away with it. You have more in common with cops than you ever knew!



I'm glad criminal charges were dropped against Alec Baldwin. As for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed she deserves a fair trail so we can figure out if she was the one who loaded or left live roads in a prop gun.



I'm glad criminal charges were dropped against Alec Baldwin.

I'm not. The charge should not be murder, but he raised the gun, pulled back the hammer, and then pulled the trigger. That's manslaughter. Any of us muggles who did the same would face this charge. Alec's getting away with it. That you're "glad" is frankly baffling.



Baldwin still faces a lawsuit against him by the victim's family. They may have a good chance of winning. It seems to me that there could be a settlement in order to kill the story's continuance.

Baldwin obviously lied when he said he didn't pull the trigger, but evidently his attorneys were able to put all the culpability onto the armorer.

Ironically all this publicity will result in greatly increased ticket sales. So Baldwin ---as producer, story writer, and actor-- will greatly benefit financially from this terrible accident.



I'm not taking the bait...
He killed a woman. He lied about pulling the trigger. He refused to turn over his phone. He was negligent both as an actor and a producer. You're glad he won't even stand trial for it. I'm not baiting you. I'm drawing a line between us.