Wait he was handed live gun, which was supposed to fire blanks and yet it's him getting charged and not the propmaster. what the fuck? what am I missing?
So, there is a part where he's an executive producer and may have ignored warnings regarding safety.
According to a Wikipedia article on the incident it was the armorer that had previous experience with accidental discharges of firearms and I guess it's the mere point of their presence during filming to make sure all guns are handled safely. Their job was to hand a safe gun to the actor, they didn't do it and a person died. I don't fucking see one reason to charge the actor, regardless of whether they happen to be a producer or not, and not charge the person actually responsible for the accident.
He was the armorer’s boss, and the producer, so it was his job to make sure everything was as required. He failed his responsibilities, someone died. It’s pretty simple.
It's maddening the amount of people deflecting responsibility off of him. If a workplace safety incident happened, and the boss has cultivated the lax culture against safety AND is involved with said incident, but he's not responsible? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Tbh, my first reaction was that it wasn’t fair; then I read more details as they were reported and had a moment of clarity. People get comfortable and mess up, it happens. This time, it cost someone their life.
For those worried about Alec, he has plenty of money. His ego and wallet will take a hit, but he’s not going to prison. He may or not be in a mental prison, but he can afford quality therapy, so if he is and chooses to stay there, that’s on him.
I went on exactly the same path as you and I only read about it when I came across the articles casually browsing, I didn't actively seek them out.
There are people that knew more and are still defending him, which is wild.
I hear you. He can still be a decent person who made a serious mistake due to gross negligence. I’m not saying he is or isn’t decent; I like s lot of past things he said, and I hope this was a wake up call for all of us: If we’re coasting too long on good reputation/intention/feelings, we’re going to get hard reminders to actually continue working to be better than we were, yesterday.
edited
I'm basing what I say on the Wikipedia article and the two years old Legal Eagle video, but it seems it wasn't his negligence, but rather the armorer's and the assistant producer's:
According to a search warrant, the guns were briefly checked by armorer Gutierrez-Reed, before assistant director Halls took the Pietta revolver from the prop cart and handed it to Baldwin.[39][40] In a subsequent affidavit, Halls said the safety protocol regarding this firearm was such that Halls would open the loading gate of the revolver and rotate the cylinder to expose the chambers so he could inspect them himself. According to the affidavit, Halls said he did not check all cylinder chambers, but he recalled seeing three rounds in the cylinder at the time. (After the shooting, Halls said in the affidavit, Gutierrez-Reed retrieved the weapon and opened it, and Halls said that he saw four rounds which were plainly blanks, and one which could have been the remaining shell of a discharged live round.)[41] In the warrant, it is further stated that Halls announced the term "cold gun", meaning that it was empty.[39] Halls's lawyer, Lisa Torraco, later sought to assert that he did not take the gun off the cart and hand it to Baldwin as reported, but when pressed by a reporter to be clear, she refused to repeat that assertion
Btw, holy fucking shit I hate lawyers
He was the boss of all bosses. That’s the point. The buck stopped with him. Either he’s boss material or he’s not. Having money alone doesn’t give you the skill. The skill would be accepting responsibility, stop pointing fingers, accepting legal and financial consequences.
Literally no one is worried about him as a driving force bud, if you think thats the concern or topic of discussion you should probably sit it out
Then why are people whinging about poor Alex refusing to take his rightful responsibility, like adults and poor people are expected to do?
Because its not actually clear who is guilty of the death, the producer who hired an incompetent firearm safety coordinator or the incompetent firearm safety coordinator.
Fucking obviously, you child.
If being called a child over acting childish about a human being dying is too much for you, I again suggest you sit this conversation out and let the adults continue it.
Perhaps because Baldwin, as far as we know, did everything correctly? He had the armorer prepare the gun and assistant producer check it. The armorer failed to do it correctly and the assistant producer failed at their part of the job. They are guilty of the accident, because they did not follow the procedure required, not the person who gave them the task
No one is absolving responsibility from the armourer.
But if I'm the boss of a warehouse, never enforce any OSHA safety standards against my staff, and one of them just signed off that they inspected the forklift that day without actually doing so, and I drove the forklift and killed someone because of the forklift's malfunction, I am, as the boss, partly responsible for the incident.
To say otherwise is flying against rules and regulations written in blood, as we can clearly see.
How does this even apply to the situation?
Baldwin is one of the producer (boss), who did not enforce any safety standards (allowed crews to bring live ammo to the set, allowed armourer to be subpar), and ended up with one of his staff dead.
If you don't know how my analogy applies to the situation you clearly don't know enough about it to form an informed opinion.
ALL workplace safety standards should be the responsibility of the boss in some capacity. That's how safety standards are maintained. If the boss is allowed to shrug it off saying "it's not my fault the staff is an idiot" that's how we end up with new hires dying on the line. If you can't understand that I could only hope you aren't in charge of anyone's safety.
who did not enforce any safety standards (allowed crews to bring live ammo to the set, allowed armourer to be subpar), and ended up with one of his staff dead.
It's not that simple because there were a lot of producers and we don't know what his involvement in her hiring was. A producer can do anything from practically everything to literally nothing.
Pity he didn’t insist on everyone being safe. I’m still musing the fact that live ammunition was even where it could possibly have been confused with blanks; I’m wondering if anyone has hired a PI to investigate Ms. Guiterrez and other cast and crew who may have had any grudges or other hm, conditions, that may have led to such an unfortunate accident. Or Baldwin himself. I’m not sure about LE investigating every angle, at all. In 2021, Baldwin had a net worth of ~$61 mn.
I looked and found this article, as well: https://www.distractify.com/p/alec-baldwin-net-worth. I would hope Mr. Baldwin has competent counsel and a competent PI. Nonetheless, he’s been charged, and I do understand the charges. All we can do is send best wishes, and see how it plays out in court. I’m sure any fan mail support that’s not inauthentic expressing solidarity and support would be appropriate and appreciated.
As an aside, seven kids. My heart goes out to his family.
I think it would be fair to charge him with reckless endangerment if he was involved with her hiring and there were clear red flags, but producers have extremely varied roles and I don't know what his personal involvement was.
I agree the set was a mess and whoever was in charge of that side should definitely be charged for endangerment. I don't know if the most responsible person was Baldwin though, because there were a lot of producers involved and being labeled a producer doesn't mean you actually do anything. It's possible that he had more involvement, but I don't want to make that assumption based on the title of producer alone.
I do think he should have used his influence to do more to make the set safe, no matter what his responsibilities were, and that he was irresponsible in that regard no matter what, but not doing enough isn't necessarily criminal if he wasn't the directly responsible individual.
I meant red flags before she was hired, but she should have been fired immediately after these things happened, I agree.
Let the legal system do its thing. The prosecutor will still have to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime they allege he committed.
From my own standpoint I can understand how a certain amount of responsibility lies on him too. If I were handed something that looks like a gun or a knife, I would probably check to make sure it isn't a real gun myself.
Especially in the US, where tragic accidental gun-related deaths and injuries happen every day.
Your argument stops being valid the moment you said probably
If you hired a professional armorer to handle guns safely and then have had assistant producer check it and confirm the gun is safe then I imagine you would have assumed it actually is.
The armorer trial was pushed back to Feb 21st of this year.
And even though it's a prop, it should still be handled as if it was loaded at all time, not point it at anyone unless necessary, etc.
It may not entirely be his fault, but he was still careless.
The scene involved Baldwin's character removing a gun from its holster and pointing it toward the camera. The trio behind the monitor were two feet (0.6 m) from the muzzle of the firearm and none of them were wearing protective gear such as noise-canceling headphones or safety goggles.
The trio behind the monitor began repositioning the camera to remove a shadow, and Baldwin began explaining to the crew how he planned to draw the firearm. He said, "So, I guess I'm gonna take this out, pull it, and go, 'Bang!'" When he removed it from the holster, the revolver discharged a single time.
Halls was quoted by his attorney Lisa Torraco as saying that Baldwin did not pull the trigger, and that Baldwin's finger was never within the trigger guard during the incident.
This would be David Halls, the assistant director.
Since when is noise-canceling headphones protective gear, lol?!
Since... about a decade ago? Noise cancellation/reduction has been an available feature in earmuffs marketed to firearms users for a while now.
Then they aren't headphones, they are earmuffs with noise cancellation.
The insulation in the earmuffs is doing the real work. Noise cancellation by itself isn't going to protect your ears much at all, if anything.
Yeah I don’t think anyone reasonable thinks Baldwin purposefully shot that person, it was a tragic accident that was preventable at a lot of levels and while I don’t think he would be culpable were he not producing the film and merely acting in it, the fact is he is because he was
It has to be someone's job to make sure guns on set are safe
And someone's job is to control that this person does their job properly. Which is the someone's boss who delegated the task.
In other words, an executive who assigns a task to someone is responsible to ensure it is done properly.
And someone's job is to control that this person does their job properly. Which is the someone's boss who delegated the task.
Yep, AD David Halls'.
Of course the armorer's job, but safety comes in layers. It's in a way everyone's job to apply basic precautions, especially when you're handling one.
Treat all guns as loaded to minimize the potential for harm.
Ok but you have an expert saying “this gun will fire blanks when you pull the trigger, I loaded them, nobody else can touch the gun except me and you under my supervision. When the camera starts rolling in a bit you’re going to point it at that person and fire the blanks in accordance with the script. After the scene ends you hand the gun back to me because nobody else is allowed to touch it”
That’s how movies involving firearms work. If he was following industry and legal standards then he shouldn’t be held responsible as the actor. Maybe the standards need to be changed. Maybe he needs to be held accountable as the producer who hired the armorer. But there needs to be a mens rea for it to be a crime and it needs to be a criminal negligence that we would hold others accountable for if they engage in it without tragedy.
Ok but you have an expert saying “this gun will fire blanks when you pull the trigger, I loaded them, nobody else can touch the gun except me and you under my supervision. When the camera starts rolling in a bit you’re going to point it at that person and fire the blanks in accordance with the script. After the scene ends you hand the gun back to me because nobody else is allowed to touch it”
And not only that, but also producer (David Halls), whose job was to double check the armorer's preparation of the gun, confirms it is safe. I think people claiming this was in any way Baldwin's fault are taking a piss
I think they’re people who understand basic firearm safety but don’t understand extenuating circumstances or the fact that movies tend to use real firearms shooting specialized ammunition.
And the fact is that if you hang out in weird places you’ll meet people who think they know what they’re doing with a gun and really need to be following the first rule of firearm safety (don’t point it at shit you don’t want to destroy). People like the sort who bring unloaded guns into the bedroom or who point them at friends as a joke. You know, morons (and I say this as someone who does do dangerous shit for fun). But there’s a difference between touching an electric wire because you shut off the circuit yourself and touching one because a master electrician assured you it’s safe.
George Clooney has said that on the sets he's been on, both the prop master and the actor check the gun. If a scene requires someone to shoot towards the camera, a transparent barrier is placed in front of the camera, even when it's blanks being used. You don't rehearse a scene with a gun that's capable of firing, you use a dummy gun for that. A real firearm isn't handed to an actor until just before the camera starts rolling, not while they're just setting things up.
These are sensible precautions to take, they just weren't happening on Alec Baldwin's set. The reasons for these precautions is that the "master armorer" can screw up. People complained about lax gun safety before the incident, the complaints were ignored.
The scene they were filming involved him pointing the gun at the camera. The person who got shot was standing behind the camera.
Alec Baldwin claims he did not pull the trigger, and this was corroborated by the assistant director on set.
Exactly. Safety comes in layers and therefore assistant producer David Halls was supposed to double check the gun after the armorer prepared it. He failed at it, the armorer failed at their job and it's theirs and only theirs fault.
Public scapegoat.
Edit: Alec Baldwin is a known Democrat and caricatured Donald Trump famously on SNL. This is clearly a hit job on him because of his stance.
Even if that’s true, Alec bears legal responsibility. I’m left of USA “left,” so it’s not like I am wrongfully projecting unwarranted culpability onto Alec. I’ve no problems with anything I recall him saying. I understand the emotions that may be driving Alec’s refuseal to accept legal and moral responsibility. It still doesn’t make him less responsible, legally or ethically.
It's all so ridiculous. Alec has made so many statements damning his own case. Like that he didn't know anyone was hurt until police showed up and told him like 45 minutes after. So what, he does his scene, walks off nine the wiser? Maybe she was killed instantly and didn't scream, but the other guy that was shot and didn't lose consciousness. Surely he had something to say when it happened. Nope, Alec is so innocent, he didn't pull the trigger, didn't know it fired, didn't know anyone was hurt.
I hadn’t read that. As I said, we’ll need to wait for evidence to publicly emerge.
Wait he was handed live gun, which was supposed to fire blanks and yet it's him getting charged and not the propmaster. what the fuck? what am I missing?
So, there is a part where he's an executive producer and may have ignored warnings regarding safety.
According to a Wikipedia article on the incident it was the armorer that had previous experience with accidental discharges of firearms and I guess it's the mere point of their presence during filming to make sure all guns are handled safely. Their job was to hand a safe gun to the actor, they didn't do it and a person died. I don't fucking see one reason to charge the actor, regardless of whether they happen to be a producer or not, and not charge the person actually responsible for the accident.
He was the armorer’s boss, and the producer, so it was his job to make sure everything was as required. He failed his responsibilities, someone died. It’s pretty simple.
It's maddening the amount of people deflecting responsibility off of him. If a workplace safety incident happened, and the boss has cultivated the lax culture against safety AND is involved with said incident, but he's not responsible? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Tbh, my first reaction was that it wasn’t fair; then I read more details as they were reported and had a moment of clarity. People get comfortable and mess up, it happens. This time, it cost someone their life.
For those worried about Alec, he has plenty of money. His ego and wallet will take a hit, but he’s not going to prison. He may or not be in a mental prison, but he can afford quality therapy, so if he is and chooses to stay there, that’s on him.
I went on exactly the same path as you and I only read about it when I came across the articles casually browsing, I didn't actively seek them out.
There are people that knew more and are still defending him, which is wild.
I hear you. He can still be a decent person who made a serious mistake due to gross negligence. I’m not saying he is or isn’t decent; I like s lot of past things he said, and I hope this was a wake up call for all of us: If we’re coasting too long on good reputation/intention/feelings, we’re going to get hard reminders to actually continue working to be better than we were, yesterday.
I'm basing what I say on the Wikipedia article and the two years old Legal Eagle video, but it seems it wasn't his negligence, but rather the armorer's and the assistant producer's:
Btw, holy fucking shit I hate lawyers
He was the boss of all bosses. That’s the point. The buck stopped with him. Either he’s boss material or he’s not. Having money alone doesn’t give you the skill. The skill would be accepting responsibility, stop pointing fingers, accepting legal and financial consequences.
Literally no one is worried about him as a driving force bud, if you think thats the concern or topic of discussion you should probably sit it out
Then why are people whinging about poor Alex refusing to take his rightful responsibility, like adults and poor people are expected to do?
Because its not actually clear who is guilty of the death, the producer who hired an incompetent firearm safety coordinator or the incompetent firearm safety coordinator.
Fucking obviously, you child.
If being called a child over acting childish about a human being dying is too much for you, I again suggest you sit this conversation out and let the adults continue it.
Or keep spamming my inbox with deleted comments.
Perhaps because Baldwin, as far as we know, did everything correctly? He had the armorer prepare the gun and assistant producer check it. The armorer failed to do it correctly and the assistant producer failed at their part of the job. They are guilty of the accident, because they did not follow the procedure required, not the person who gave them the task
No one is absolving responsibility from the armourer.
But if I'm the boss of a warehouse, never enforce any OSHA safety standards against my staff, and one of them just signed off that they inspected the forklift that day without actually doing so, and I drove the forklift and killed someone because of the forklift's malfunction, I am, as the boss, partly responsible for the incident.
To say otherwise is flying against rules and regulations written in blood, as we can clearly see.
How does this even apply to the situation?
Baldwin is one of the producer (boss), who did not enforce any safety standards (allowed crews to bring live ammo to the set, allowed armourer to be subpar), and ended up with one of his staff dead.
If you don't know how my analogy applies to the situation you clearly don't know enough about it to form an informed opinion.
ALL workplace safety standards should be the responsibility of the boss in some capacity. That's how safety standards are maintained. If the boss is allowed to shrug it off saying "it's not my fault the staff is an idiot" that's how we end up with new hires dying on the line. If you can't understand that I could only hope you aren't in charge of anyone's safety.
And you're basing these two claims on?
It's not that simple because there were a lot of producers and we don't know what his involvement in her hiring was. A producer can do anything from practically everything to literally nothing.
Lol! He was also the actor handling the weapon! We aren’t privy to grand jury evidence, so we’ll have to wait and see. I found this, for anyone interested. https://apnews.com/article/what-to-know-alec-baldwin-grand-jury-60eaa895deee6e762281d575bc4f75b3
Pity he didn’t insist on everyone being safe. I’m still musing the fact that live ammunition was even where it could possibly have been confused with blanks; I’m wondering if anyone has hired a PI to investigate Ms. Guiterrez and other cast and crew who may have had any grudges or other hm, conditions, that may have led to such an unfortunate accident. Or Baldwin himself. I’m not sure about LE investigating every angle, at all. In 2021, Baldwin had a net worth of ~$61 mn.
I looked and found this article, as well: https://www.distractify.com/p/alec-baldwin-net-worth. I would hope Mr. Baldwin has competent counsel and a competent PI. Nonetheless, he’s been charged, and I do understand the charges. All we can do is send best wishes, and see how it plays out in court. I’m sure any fan mail support that’s not inauthentic expressing solidarity and support would be appropriate and appreciated.
As an aside, seven kids. My heart goes out to his family.
I think it would be fair to charge him with reckless endangerment if he was involved with her hiring and there were clear red flags, but producers have extremely varied roles and I don't know what his personal involvement was.
Clear red flags, you say? https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-10-22/alec-baldwin-rust-camera-crew-walked-off-set
I agree the set was a mess and whoever was in charge of that side should definitely be charged for endangerment. I don't know if the most responsible person was Baldwin though, because there were a lot of producers involved and being labeled a producer doesn't mean you actually do anything. It's possible that he had more involvement, but I don't want to make that assumption based on the title of producer alone.
I do think he should have used his influence to do more to make the set safe, no matter what his responsibilities were, and that he was irresponsible in that regard no matter what, but not doing enough isn't necessarily criminal if he wasn't the directly responsible individual.
I meant red flags before she was hired, but she should have been fired immediately after these things happened, I agree.
Let the legal system do its thing. The prosecutor will still have to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of the crime they allege he committed.
From my own standpoint I can understand how a certain amount of responsibility lies on him too. If I were handed something that looks like a gun or a knife, I would probably check to make sure it isn't a real gun myself.
Especially in the US, where tragic accidental gun-related deaths and injuries happen every day.
Your argument stops being valid the moment you said probably
If you hired a professional armorer to handle guns safely and then have had assistant producer check it and confirm the gun is safe then I imagine you would have assumed it actually is.
The armorer trial was pushed back to Feb 21st of this year.
And even though it's a prop, it should still be handled as if it was loaded at all time, not point it at anyone unless necessary, etc.
It may not entirely be his fault, but he was still careless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_shooting_incident
This would be David Halls, the assistant director.
Since when is noise-canceling headphones protective gear, lol?!
Since... about a decade ago? Noise cancellation/reduction has been an available feature in earmuffs marketed to firearms users for a while now.
Then they aren't headphones, they are earmuffs with noise cancellation. The insulation in the earmuffs is doing the real work. Noise cancellation by itself isn't going to protect your ears much at all, if anything.
Yeah I don’t think anyone reasonable thinks Baldwin purposefully shot that person, it was a tragic accident that was preventable at a lot of levels and while I don’t think he would be culpable were he not producing the film and merely acting in it, the fact is he is because he was
It has to be someone's job to make sure guns on set are safe
And someone's job is to control that this person does their job properly. Which is the someone's boss who delegated the task.
In other words, an executive who assigns a task to someone is responsible to ensure it is done properly.
Yep, AD David Halls'.
Of course the armorer's job, but safety comes in layers. It's in a way everyone's job to apply basic precautions, especially when you're handling one.
Treat all guns as loaded to minimize the potential for harm.
Ok but you have an expert saying “this gun will fire blanks when you pull the trigger, I loaded them, nobody else can touch the gun except me and you under my supervision. When the camera starts rolling in a bit you’re going to point it at that person and fire the blanks in accordance with the script. After the scene ends you hand the gun back to me because nobody else is allowed to touch it”
That’s how movies involving firearms work. If he was following industry and legal standards then he shouldn’t be held responsible as the actor. Maybe the standards need to be changed. Maybe he needs to be held accountable as the producer who hired the armorer. But there needs to be a mens rea for it to be a crime and it needs to be a criminal negligence that we would hold others accountable for if they engage in it without tragedy.
And not only that, but also producer (David Halls), whose job was to double check the armorer's preparation of the gun, confirms it is safe. I think people claiming this was in any way Baldwin's fault are taking a piss
I think they’re people who understand basic firearm safety but don’t understand extenuating circumstances or the fact that movies tend to use real firearms shooting specialized ammunition.
And the fact is that if you hang out in weird places you’ll meet people who think they know what they’re doing with a gun and really need to be following the first rule of firearm safety (don’t point it at shit you don’t want to destroy). People like the sort who bring unloaded guns into the bedroom or who point them at friends as a joke. You know, morons (and I say this as someone who does do dangerous shit for fun). But there’s a difference between touching an electric wire because you shut off the circuit yourself and touching one because a master electrician assured you it’s safe.
George Clooney has said that on the sets he's been on, both the prop master and the actor check the gun. If a scene requires someone to shoot towards the camera, a transparent barrier is placed in front of the camera, even when it's blanks being used. You don't rehearse a scene with a gun that's capable of firing, you use a dummy gun for that. A real firearm isn't handed to an actor until just before the camera starts rolling, not while they're just setting things up.
These are sensible precautions to take, they just weren't happening on Alec Baldwin's set. The reasons for these precautions is that the "master armorer" can screw up. People complained about lax gun safety before the incident, the complaints were ignored.
The scene they were filming involved him pointing the gun at the camera. The person who got shot was standing behind the camera.
Alec Baldwin claims he did not pull the trigger, and this was corroborated by the assistant director on set.
Exactly. Safety comes in layers and therefore assistant producer David Halls was supposed to double check the gun after the armorer prepared it. He failed at it, the armorer failed at their job and it's theirs and only theirs fault.
Public scapegoat.
Edit: Alec Baldwin is a known Democrat and caricatured Donald Trump famously on SNL. This is clearly a hit job on him because of his stance.
Even if that’s true, Alec bears legal responsibility. I’m left of USA “left,” so it’s not like I am wrongfully projecting unwarranted culpability onto Alec. I’ve no problems with anything I recall him saying. I understand the emotions that may be driving Alec’s refuseal to accept legal and moral responsibility. It still doesn’t make him less responsible, legally or ethically.
It's all so ridiculous. Alec has made so many statements damning his own case. Like that he didn't know anyone was hurt until police showed up and told him like 45 minutes after. So what, he does his scene, walks off nine the wiser? Maybe she was killed instantly and didn't scream, but the other guy that was shot and didn't lose consciousness. Surely he had something to say when it happened. Nope, Alec is so innocent, he didn't pull the trigger, didn't know it fired, didn't know anyone was hurt.
I hadn’t read that. As I said, we’ll need to wait for evidence to publicly emerge.