Baldwin's boo-boo

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halfmoonclip

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Lots of speculation about Alec Baldwin's 'accident' on set. Yeah, he's a genuine (redacted), and he shouldn't be pointing a gun at a cinematographer and pulling the trigger. We'll dispense with that up front.
The chattering classes have offered all sorts of nonsense about debris left in the barrel from a previous blank round being propelled by a following blank. Now Stagger Lee's .44 may have gone thru Billy and broke the bartender's glass, but blank wadding fatally penetrating one person and wounding another sounds unlikely.
Are live rounds even permitted on set? Will 'prop' guns accept live rounds? Since this was a Western, therefore likely a revolver.
Anyway, thot's? Guys here know a whole lot more than the folks on TV.
Moon
 
I was taught (and follow) to NEVER point even an unloaded firearm at anything I did not want to kill. What kind of crappy setup do those movie crews use? If they want an image of a gun pointing at a camera, they should use a mirror!
 
beag_nut said:
I was taught (and follow) to NEVER point even an unloaded firearm at anything I did not want to kill. What kind of crappy setup do those movie crews use? If they want an image of a gun pointing at a camera, they should use a mirror!
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My private parts probably not thrilled about me carrying AIWB but I do, in a rigid holster.
 
Years ago I was hired as set security for a few movies that were filmed in the little suburb I started my career in. I didn’t work with the guns, but I was around a bit when they were handled.,

If I remember right, the movies I worked on would often do a scene run-through with rubber or other phony guns first so the actors/stuntmen knew their marks, then when the director was ready to film a set armorer would supply blank-loaded arms to them for the actual film shoot. These guns, magazines and ammo were double-triple checked by the weapons staff for no live ammo or other potential hazards.

Some guns were blank-only, but some were actual firearms that could fire real ammo. (We bitch about “Hollywood” screwing up their guns on screen, right?? ;)) In this case I believe the gun was real ( it may gave been for close-ups, etc.)

I can merely speculate, after hearing about the earlier staff walk-out over safety concerns, that this low-budget film was using low-cost staff and also skimped on aspects that higher budget films use in order to save money. This easily appears to have been in the safety arena, where people can get complacent. It’s easy to see where hired staff’s inexperience, or inattention to details, allowed some sort of projectile-loaded round to be placed into the movie gun.

It just takes one error in life, or on a movie set, to create a tragedy just like this one. If the set armorer(s) weren’t paying attention this is the result.

Stay safe.
 
It was a movie set. Real guns are used in movies. They are loaded with blanks for scenes requiring a bang. They are loaded with duds to show cartridges in a revolver. The dud has had the powder removed and the primer fired. Then the bullet is reinserted. There is usually an armorer on the set who takes charge of such things. In this case the gun was loaded with a live round but an assistant director. The union crew walked off the set a day or two before the shooting over a labor dispute. It is likely that is what led to an assistant director loading the gun. It is rare but not uncommon for a prop gun to pointed at the camera and fired for visual effect in the film. The shooting was a massive screw-up because someone did not know a live round from a dud b
 
1942bull said:
In this case the gun was loaded with a live round but an assistant director.
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I have to wonder why there were live rounds on the set. If there is a reasonable explanation, why were they available to the ignorant?
I'm sure there is an explanation for how this came about, but there is no excuse. Someone is dead and someone is injured because somebody (possibly more than one) was incompetent.
Is Alec Baldwin at fault, either wholly or partially? YES! How do you suppose it would play in court if any one of us said "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury; he handed me a gun and told me it was safe, so I pointed it and pulled the trigger."?
 
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