Shooting death on a film set

[Steve Klare]

All I can say is when I learned to shoot a gun there were basically two iron-clad rules.

1) Always assume it's loaded, even if you think you know it's empty.
2) Point it at the ground, point it at the sky, but never at anyone or anything you don't intend to shoot. (This goes double for your own foot!)

Any actor handling a gun needs some kind of firearms training. Let's face it: Alec Baldwin is in a mess now and he can't ever come out of it painlessly, beginning with his own conscience. Even if other people started it, it would have been better if he got to be his own last line of defense. He should have been issued an empty gun and verified it. He should have been issued the ammunition and been able to verify the type visually, loaded it and then emptied the gun when he was finished.

I'm surprised they use real guns anyway: use a replica and dub in the "BANG!" later! Even then you'd need to treat it like a real, loaded gun...just in case. (I mean: do you remember that scene with Chief Inspector Dreyfus and the cigarette lighter?)

[Terry Sills]

Absolutely correct Steve. I do target shooting and the rules concerning the handling of firearms are so strict and there is always a Range Officer present to make sure everyone complies. Although Alec Baldwin is perhaps not completely blameless, I think that silly female ‘armourer’ should be hung out to dry. Why on earth was she hired in the first place when she admitted beforehand that she had little experience and disliked handling guns. Crazy!

[Osi Osgood]

... and the fact that they were Hiring non Union workers. Was she one of these non Union workers? As a producer on the film, I highly doubt that he didn't know about it. Yes, it can bring in a film cheaper and under budget, but it's illegal by Hollywood's standards.

[Winbert Hutahaean]

Agree with Steve, with today's technology, will the audience know it is a replica gun or real? I don't think so.

Tom Cruise did not fly a real F-16 why then somebody needs to use a real gun even though just for a prop?

[Brian Fretwell]

The only suggestion given(on another forum) was that directors didn't think their actors could realistically portray the recoil from a real gun!!!
The answer given was "take then to a shooting range so they can learn, don't do it on set".

[Steve Klare]

I would imagine it would be possible to build a replica gun with an internal mechanism to simulate recoil: some kind of weight on a spring released by the trigger. They say a blank has very little recoil anyway: that one guy in the firing squad who was given a blank usually knew that he'd been, especially if he was experienced with that particular gun.

[Graham Ritchie]

There is no place for live ammunition of a film set "at all" even blanks can do damage at very close range, so the filming has to be well thought out with safety to the actors and crew being at top of the list. I do feel that the person responsible on the set for the firearms in this case, has a lot to answer for. I do feel sorry for Alec Baldwin also in my view a victim of tragic circumstances, that he will have to live with.

[Steve Klare]

Yes, to me this is like somebody driving their car at a reasonable speed, stone sober and doing everything else they should, but a pedestrian runs into the road and they can't avoid hitting them.

Of course it's not their fault, but that doesn't make it any easier to process emotionally.

[Osi Osgood]

Agreed, Steve. A good illustration, as I was nearly in that same situation a few years ago. I do hope that Baldwin wasn't involved in some way with the tragedy, beyond pulling the trigger, of course.

[Ed Gordon]

UPDATE: New Mexico authorities said Wednesday they have recovered a lead projectile believed to have been fired from the gun used in the fatal movie-set shooting.

Investigators discussed their initial findings in the shooting in which actor Alec Baldwin fired a gun, killing a cinematographer and wounding the director.

Testing is being done to determine whether the lead projectile recovered from director Joel Souza’s shoulder was fired from the gun used by Baldwin.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said it’s too early to comment on whether any charges will be filed.

He also noted that 500 rounds of ammunition — a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and live rounds — were found while searching the set.

The sheriff would not comment on how the rounds got on set.

Source: https://kvia.com/entertainment/2021/...-set-shooting/

Note: There is also a 20 minute video of the Sheriff's news conference at the source link above.

[Terry Sills]

There is no question that the armourer was specifically hired for the purpose of the safe handling of firearms, whether using blanks or not and it is her failure that this tragedy occurred. From her own admission she was inexperienced and disliked handling guns and loading ammunition. She should face jail time and probably civil legal action.

[David M. Leugers]

Baldwin is responsible and should go to jail. This was not an accident. This was manslaughter = murder by a negligent act. It has been reported that Baldwin was supposedly practicing a fast draw when the shooting occurred. In other words, he was not pulling the trigger of the gun during a scene being filmed where somehow the gun was real and loaded with live ammunition. Almost no details of the event have come out. For instance, how did both the cinematographer and director get shot? The 911 call was bizarre. Something smells here.

[Steve Klare]

The way I look at this is even if Alec Baldwin wasn't responsible for this, he really should have been.

Where I work, we deal with all sorts of ways to die: high voltage, cryogenic gasses, huge magnetic fields, high power X-rays, high pressure air, high vacuum, machine tools, forklifts, chemicals, hostile co-workers...

-and before we let anybody mess with anything that might wipe out half the county, they have to be trained and often tested. I train and test people for safely shutting down high power electrical gear to do maintenance and repairs.

Everybody is responsible for their own safety, not so we know who to blame after the fact, it's so they are fully able to protect themselves from harm, and therefore everybody else nearby, and if they don't feel safe, they can even say "stop".

So Alec Baldwin, and everybody else that gets a gun shoved in their hands, should be trained to work with it safely. If he's not: no guns.

It's not as if years ago somebody said "Good morning, Mr. Connery. This is an Aston Martin DB5...oh, by the way: Do you know how to drive?".

[Graham Ritchie]

This on the the set tragic post, reminded me of the the making of "The Twilight Zone Movie" way back in the 1980s, where actor Vic Morrow and two children were killed. It was all the news at the time, it was and still is, the worst on set disaster in making a film I can think of. If you have never heard of it, then this video covers it well, its well worth a watch.