Alec Baldwin shoots 2 on set of western, 1 dead

[bintananth]

I've known rednecks most of them are not stupid.

They have a different set of skill sets yes but farming takes serious amounts of know how, as does pulling off a successful hunt, and operating a still isn't easy either.

Recneck, to me, brings forth mental images of someone "uneducated, rural, and white with a hick accent and an innate distrust of city folk."

Stupid is not part of that mental image.

Someone who grew up on a farm knows a whole hell of a lot more about agriculture than I ever will. They probably don't need any higher education aside from maybe an accounting class to successfully run one.

 

[Rocinante]

I still see a lot of people going at Alec for this one, and I still don't blame him.

Alec/whoever else was in charge, hired people do make sure the guns were safe, because they are aware that they don't know shit about guns.

It's his job to act. He hired someone else to make sure shit was safe. THAT PERSON is at fault. Not Alec.

And to be clear, I hate Alec's politics, and I'm aware he will probably use this incident to push his anti gun stance. And I think he's a hypocrite to be so anti gun, while being okay using them to make money.

However, I don't think we should be sharpening our pitchforks to go after him on this.

 

[UberSink]

It's his job to act. He hired someone else to make sure shit

Well, he didn't hire them, the production company that was overworking everyone to the point where a bunch of people who just walked off did.

And then after hiring non-union workers to replace them and multiple misfires the day before they decided to keep fucking shooting the movie.

 

[Rocinante]

Well, he didn't hire them, the production company that was overworking everyone to the point where a bunch of people who just walked off did.

And then after hiring non-union workers to replace them and multiple misfires the day before they decided to keep fucking shooting the movie.

He is a producer, so I was considering him at least partially responsible for hiring decisions.

 

[UberSink]

He is a producer, so I was considering him at least partially responsible for hiring decisions.

Fair enough, set sounded like a fucking nightmare either way

 

[prinCZess]

I still see a lot of people going at Alec for this one, and I still don't blame him.

Ehh...That depends on the details. If the gun went off with a live round in the course of acting out a scene I'd agree with you--tragedy where the responsibility falls squarely on the armorer for allowing a live round or not informing.

As one account has gone, though, Baldwin horsing around and going "Another shoot? Why don't I just shoot you?" and then jokingly pulling the trigger at people? That makes me much less sympathetic. Part and partial of acting with guns, even if you do hire other people to teach and oversee things, is taking proper safety measures yourself. It's a responsibility you see mimetically with folks like Keanu Reeves or Will Smith as outright advertising gimmicks, it should be one Baldwin has as well.
That said...We still don't seem to have solid details on the order of events or what happened (as the 'Baldwin horsing around' story has also been contradicted by other claims...Or there was another floating around that he was ranting about Trump...So who knows what was happening at this point)

 

[Sailor.X]

I still see a lot of people going at Alec for this one, and I still don't blame him.

Alec/whoever else was in charge, hired people do make sure the guns were safe, because they are aware that they don't know shit about guns.

It's his job to act. He hired someone else to make sure shit was safe. THAT PERSON is at fault. Not Alec.

And to be clear, I hate Alec's politics, and I'm aware he will probably use this incident to push his anti gun stance. And I think he's a hypocrite to be so anti gun, while being okay using them to make money.

However, I don't think we should be sharpening our pitchforks to go after him on this.

In the Great State of SC if I would have done the EXACT SAME THING Alec Baldwin did. My happy ass would be sitting in jail facing Murder 2 or Manslaughter charges. He was being careless with a gun. He pulled the trigger it is all his damn fault.

 

[Urabrask Revealed]

Shot a cinematographer? Sounds like he was aiming towards the camera for a scene, in which case it would be unreasonable to expect it'd be loaded with a real bullet. Yes, gun safety always check and all that, but still. Doesn't sound like his fault.

Don't care. It's an excuse to lock an anti-gun actor away, under circumstances that "lesser" citizens did jail-time for. Why should he walk when people like Ritterhorsen are being hounded by his allies?

 

[Jeff Thomas]

I was raised around guns. I can't pick one up without checking the chamber. In my book, if you're holding a gun, you're responsible for what the gun does, end of story.

If Hollywood wants to impose some gun safety standards, they can start in Hollywood. Armorers should be required to pass and intensive course, and then work as apprentices for some number (hundreds?) of hours. They should also be type-rated for whatever sort of firearm they are handling. An actor handling gun needs to pass a basic gun safety class (at minimum). The production companies, armorers and actors on the set of something involving guns should be licensed and bonded.

If all this means no movies with guns get made for a year or two, I frankly, wouldn't care. Hollywood could use the time to learn how to make better shows, most of what gets churned out is crap.

 

[Battlegrinder]

Why don't Hollywood just CGI guns now. The technology is advanced enough to do that now.

It's actually not advanced enough. Corridor digital had a video discussing this in the context of John Wick:



It's still very difficult (and more relevantly, very expensive) to do CGI gunshots that look right, and even harder to do the actual filming when the actor's guns aren't really recoiling. The JW films can get away with a lot of that by being so fast and fluid you don't notice the issue, but on other films its a big deal.

I still see a lot of people going at Alec for this one, and I still don't blame him.

Alec/whoever else was in charge, hired people do make sure the guns were safe, because they are aware that they don't know shit about guns.

It's his job to act. He hired someone else to make sure shit was safe. THAT PERSON is at fault. Not Alec.

And to be clear, I hate Alec's politics, and I'm aware he will probably use this incident to push his anti gun stance. And I think he's a hypocrite to be so anti gun, while being okay using them to make money.

However, I don't think we should be sharpening our pitchforks to go after him on this.

I disagree, but only partially. Yes the armorer is clearly at fault here, for misloading the gun or losing track of which gun was loaded with what.

That explains why Baldwin became the point of failure, it does not excuse or absolve that failure. For some things, I could by that. If the gun was unsafe because of some obscure design feature that the armor didn't address (like some black powder revolvers running the risk of having all the rounds in the cylinder go off at once because it's just loose powder back there and not a cased round), fine, Alec gets a pass on that, it's not like he's going to know every trick of every gun ever made.

In the specific case of "are there bullets in this gun, and how should I handle it regardless of the answer to that", no, he does not get a pass. That is firearm safety 101 level stuff and if he doesn't know that, after a decades long career of not only shooting movies that have guns in them but using guns in those movies, that is his fault and his error, and it is further the fault of whoever decided to give an undertrained actor a gun.

 

[Bacle]

It's actually not advanced enough. Corridor digital had a video discussing this in the context of John Wick:



It's still very difficult (and more relevantly, very expensive) to do CGI gunshots that look right, and even harder to do the actual filming when the actor's guns aren't really recoiling. The JW films can get away with a lot of that by being so fast and fluid you don't notice the issue, but on other films its a big deal.



I disagree, but only partially. Yes the armorer is clearly at fault here, for misloading the gun or losing track of which gun was loaded with what.

That explains why Baldwin became the point of failure, it does not excuse or absolve that failure. For some things, I could by that. If the gun was unsafe because of some obscure design feature that the armor didn't address (like some black powder revolvers running the risk of having all the rounds in the cylinder go off at once because it's just loose powder back there and not a cased round), fine, Alec gets a pass on that, it's not like he's going to know every trick of every gun ever made.

In the specific case of "are there bullets in this gun, and how should I handle it regardless of the answer to that", no, he does not get a pass. That is firearm safety 101 level stuff and if he doesn't know that, after a decades long career of not only shooting movies that have guns in them but using guns in those movies, that is his fault and his error, and it is further the fault of whoever decided to give an undertrained actor a gun.

Supposedly there were multiple other neg discharges in the days leading up to this, and they kept live ammo and blanks in the same area. So the armour was fucking up, and supposedly only got the job do to nepotism.

It's possible Baldwin thought he had a gun full of blanks, and ended up with a live round mixed in, or possibly left in the chamber from off-set target practice.

This is a clusterfuck, but we need to know the specific chain of events and decisions that lead to this, before we can assign blame with any sort of accuracy.

 

[Laskar]

Supposedly there were multiple other neg discharges in the days leading up to this, and they kept live ammo and blanks in the same area. So the armour was fucking up, and supposedly only got the job do to nepotism.

The rumors flying around this story are crazy. I've heard that the armorer is at fault, and I've also heard that the armorer walked off the set because people kept ignoring her advice and upstaging her, and I've also heard that she walked off the set as part of the Hollywood union strike a few days ago.

 

[Bacle]

The rumors flying around this story are crazy. I've heard that the armorer is at fault, and I've also heard that the armorer walked off the set because people kept ignoring her advice and upstaging her, and I've also heard that she walked off the set as part of the Hollywood union strike a few days ago.

I had not heard she walked off as part of the Union thing...so who know's who might have been filling in, if that's true.

 

[LindyAF]

I still see a lot of people going at Alec for this one, and I still don't blame him.

Alec/whoever else was in charge, hired people do make sure the guns were safe, because they are aware that they don't know shit about guns.

It's his job to act. He hired someone else to make sure shit was safe. THAT PERSON is at fault. Not Alec.

Part of the reason I kind of am is that he was a producer. So, he's at least partially responsible for how the movie is made, which involves hiring people to make sure the guns are used safely. And it sounds like they weren't being used safely, because this wasn't a one off - there had been three prior negligent discharges, one involving another actor being told a gun was full of blanks when it had live ammo in it.

 

[Arch Dornan]

This is some Pulp Fiction shit shooting Marvin in the face except it's real and a tragedy.

 

[Zachowon]

From what I have seen.
Still hush hush on what happend.
The armorer supposedly gave the gun to an 11 year old not long before the incident.

 

[hyperspacewizard]

This video goes over what is know so far the armorer shouldn’t have had her job with the evidence presented here

 

[The Original Sixth]

Don't care. It's an excuse to lock an anti-gun actor away, under circumstances that "lesser" citizens did jail-time for. Why should he walk when people like Ritterhorsen are being hounded by his allies?

Rittenhouse is an entirely different situation. Rittenhouse knew he was using a gun, was aiming his gun with intent to use it AS A GUN, and then proceeded to use it as a gun. That's not to say that Rittenhouse should go to jail, especially to defend against looters, but this is hardly hypocritical. Baldwin honestly thought that the gun wasn't a danger to anyone. Persecuting people for accidents is stupid and persecuting them because you don't like them is petty.

The ones who should be paying any sort of damages here is the production company that overworked its employees and then replaced them with scabs. Although it's pathetic to see all the union production workers scream about scabs, when I bet they don't mind so much when it happens to blue collar workers via illegal immigration. Maybe conservatives should start calling them scabs, might change a few minds.

As far as gun safety is concerned, it seems like things got sloppy. But I expect that if the company wasn't overworking people and replacing them at the last minute with scabs, this probably wouldn't have happened. And I don't think anyone can honestly believe that Baldwin is a hypocrite (wrong or not) in this situation. He'd be a hypocrite if he intentionally used a gun to defend himself or his property...but that's about it.

 

[Free-Stater 101]

SNIP

That and shoddy Hollywood safety standards, as far as I know there are no mandatory firearm safety test for joining the Actors Guild which you think would be mandatory as a safety requirement. (Probably for the best, these actors know too much about firearms and they might be less likely to promote gun control.)

Yes, Baldwin could have checked the firearm before using it on set, but he is a NY Long Island raised city guy with little firearms experience beyond their 'evils' and most likely wouldn't have known how to check anyway.

 

[LordSunhawk]

I heard a few reports that the armorer was part of the walk out of union personnel. We do know that the guns were being handed out by somebody other than the armorer, which is a huge no-no.