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Alec Baldwin indicted for involuntary manslaughter in fatal gunfire on film set
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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I've said it once and I'll say it again, if you're holding a weapon it is your responsibility to know if that weapon is live, I don't care who hands it to you or under what context. Children learn this in rifle safety.
Does the armorer share responsibility? Definitely. But you can't just say "someone else got hired to do that so Baldwin is off the hook." Even pointing a gun around, live ammo or not, with the hammer cocked is plainly asinine and unsafe behavior. All Baldwin needed to do was take 5 seconds to open the chamber and look at the bullets to prevent someone losing their life, if that's not negligence then what exactly is?
I'd flip the share of liability, personally. The primary liable party is the armorer since it's their actual job to handle these things. But Baldwin shares in liability IMO because of the negligence of not verifying the state of the firearm. Especially after he knew others had used it for firing real rounds.
The whole thing is just sloppy as hell and highlights to me why regulations need to be in place, or movies need to let go of the gun firing bullshit. Every god damned thing is done in CG now, they can't afford muzzle flash suddenly?
Why would you point a gun, prop or otherwise, blanks or otherwise, at the cinematographer when cameras aren't rolling?
it's called a camera test.
Baldwin, the cinematographer and the director were all working through blocking (the movements needed for when the camera would be actually rolling).
The camera was in position, and the cinematographer and director were both looking through the monitors to adjust lighting and such.
This is all very standard stuff, and if one of the dummy rounds hadn't actually been a reload of live ammo, it would have remained standard.
This talks about how the live ammo made it onto the set.
https://variety.com/2021/film/news/rust-investigators-live-rounds-alec-baldwin-1235122384/
Baldwin could have looked at the logos on the bullets, seen the Starline Brass, and assumed that they were all dummy rounds. Only 5 of the 6 were.
Who the hell knows. He claims he was rehearsing the scene, which seems plausible. The scene being filmed would have resulted in the same injury and death, so cameras rolling doesn't seem to be an important aspect.
A better questions would be why TF the industry as a whole allows people in the path of the barrel, why they insist on using firearms with blanks, and why acting staff aren't given training on any weapon they will handle so they know how to properly inspect them.
Yeah I do agree it is primarily her fault (though why she was hired in the first place is a whole other thing, I suspect Baldwin had little to do with that anyway though). I just think he needs to take his part of the blame and not just be let off because he's a celebrity boy.
Core military leadership lesson: you can delegate authority, but it is impossible to delegate responsibility.
So if a stuntman dies on set the producer should be prosecuted because they hired the stunt coordinator?
This is not my area of expertise, but I'd guess that there is a difference between responsibility and criminal responsibility.
The producer could probably be sued in civil court.