New Mexico prosecutors on Tuesday said they intended to recharge actor Alec Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter for the fatal shooting of "Rust" cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021.
Morrissey said if new testing of the gun showed it was working, she would recharge Baldwin.
You pull a firearm’s trigger you bear responsibility for what happens. Period.
Utterly wrong. The ONLY person that bears any responsibility for firearm safety on the set of a movie is the armorer.
Unless absolutely necessary, no live or blank firing arms should be accessible to actors.
When needed, the armorer will verify the safety of the blank or live firearm and hand it to the actor. Depending on the armorer and the situation they may not even allow the actor to do something as simple as turn the safety off.
After firing the weapon, the armorer will take the firearm from the actor, clear it, and remove it from the set.
One person has that responsibility. In situations where there are multiple live or blank firing arms there may be multiple individuals with those same resposibilities, but ultimately it will still come down to the one in charge.
Repeat after me: A MOVIE SET IS NOT A GUN RANGE. You are not dealing with even twice a year hobbyist shooters. You are not in a controlled environment. The protocols that are used for firearms on set have been developed after decades of trial and error, and these are situations where said error ends in death. Trying to apply range logic to a movie set is what gets people killed, which is why sets do not work like that. You have one dedicated professional whose job is ensuring the safety of everyone on set WRT firearms. At no point did Baldwin have any responsibility to check any weapon as any weapon available to him at that time, by protocol, should have ONLY been a “weapon shaped object.” That is, a chunk of rubber or plastic molded from a real weapon that’s used for doing things like blocking shots (which is what Baldwin was doing) and generally carrying around a scene. Instead, the armorer had zero control over where firearms ended up and Baldwin picked up what he thought was a prop gun. Instead, it was a loaded live firearm. The scene involved Baldwin pointing a gun at the camera and pulling the trigger.
In no way is Baldwin criminally liable here.
Note I say nothing about civil liability. In my opinion, he’s is absolutely responsible for helping create a lax working environment by continuing to employ an armorer that clearly did not give a shit about doing their job properly.
EDIT to mention that Baldwin and the production company VERY quickly came to a settlement agreement with the family of the deceased. They were always going to win so it basically just skipped over a meaningless trial.
Might be a good argument for using clearly fake stuff in movies further on. Just hand the actor a TV remote and CGI in a hand gun or a plastic sci-fi “gun” that has no means of firing anything.
Baldwin didn’t receive the gun from the armorer. So he wasn’t even following your rules either. He’s still responsible. If he had followed the rules as you stated, upon being handed the gun by the assistant director he should have said “you’re not the armorer” and refused to handle it until it was verified as safe by the armorer.
You’re taking bits and pieces and ignoring the full context, which is a shit thing to do.
The firearm should never have been available to an AD in the first place, or to anyone but the armorer.
On a set the assumption would be that anything available to someone that wasn’t an armorer would be a non-firing replica.
The armorer alone is tasked with firearm safety on the set.
This is how it works. This is how the entire legality of the situation is established. As long as everyone is acting in good faith the liability does not fall to them, it falls to the armorer. When Baldwin received the weapon he did so believing it to be a non-firing replica, not an actual loaded firearm, as it would not be proper protocol for a loaded firearm to be available to anyone other than the armorer.
He has already settled the civil liability aspect with the victims and families. That was done rather quickly. As producer, he was liable for the hiring and continual employment of the incompetent armorer. That makes him liable on a civil level.
He has zero criminal culpability here, no matter how hard the DA tries. His roles as producer and actor are legally distinct.
When your holding a firearm, You don’t get to “not my job” basic fucking gun safety.
Professionally, as an actor, it wasn’t Baldwins job. The criminal code doesn’t care what was in his job description
Criminally, it doesn’t matter. There is a long sequence of actions that Baldwin should have taken that he did not take, any one of which would have prevented this from happening.
That sequence:
hiring a competent armorer who: didn’t have live ammo, who cleared fired arms, ensured all staff handling the weapon were trained in firearm safety, and that a multi-layered safety protocol was strictly adhered to.
could have used a non-firing replica for the blocking shots
could have cleared the firearm
could have not pointed the weapon at other people
could have not pulled the trigger.
But nope. Apparently it’s not his job and now someone is fucking dead.
You know literally nothing about anything. I already explained to you why none of your points are relevant. Stop making yourself look like more of an an idiot by continuing to post your ignorance to the world.
Says the guy quoting civil litigation in a discussion of criminal charges. I wasn’t going to go there even if it is like 6th grade civics level…. But now your just being insulting.
Just because another person also had a duty of care- doesn’t mean Baldwin didn’t.
It’s simple tragic fact that Baldwin failed in his obligation to handle a weapon that was fundamentally designed to kill humans in a safe manner. If he had done anything to even half ass checking that weapon Hutchinson would still be alive.
That the armorer failed to do their job, doesn’t change that simple fact. When you’re dealing with things that have “death” as a likely consequence… you don’t rely on a single person, which is why the armrorer is also guilty. They both are.
Nothing you are saying actually changed that Baldwin’s own actions lead directly to it- and if we swap out literally any other actor, that don’t change.
Because he still pointed a weapon fundamentally designed to murder people, at Hutchinson, and pulled the trigger.
Reasonable people don’t do that without excessive amounts of paranoia- including checking a firearm that takes ten seconds to safely check.
I find some humor in the wiki link you provided for duty of care, the first sentence starts with “In tort law” as you keep trying to use it for criminal law.
There are no legal requirements for firearm handling that requires someone to check for a load. When you, and many others, say “the first rule of firearms” I invite you to provide us with a legal definition of these rules.
There is no expectation for a non-expert to identify the differences between blanks, dummy, and live rounds.
While there was likely gross negligence on the set, I’m not sure it rises to the level of criminal liability. A film set is a unique situation where there are different rules to firearm handling. This is a simple fact that cannot be overlooked. The rules of firearms as you have been trained on and as you understand them simply don’t apply.
So your saying that an adult picking up a firearm and waiving it around cocking it and pulling the trigger (accidentally or otherwise,) isn’t negligent when that firearm happens to go off?
Yes that article mostly covers tort law which is civil. esp. In this case the negligence rose to the level of criminality, and the test for duty of care applied to show he was being negligent.
Oh, by the way. The armorer wasn’t even on site. He was handed the weapon by a non-expert who declared it cold. Adding another failed check: “hey you’re not the armorer!” Would have also saved his victim’s life.
But nope. They had a schedule to keep. So whatever. What’s the worst that could happen?
You’re acting like Baldwin is not a reasonable human- he’s not a toddler who you would have no expectation of knowing “hey maybe I shouldn’t do this”. That it was on set in a staged scenario doesn’t absolve people of their personal responsibility.
Utterly wrong. The ONLY person that bears any responsibility for firearm safety on the set of a movie is the armorer.
One person has that responsibility. In situations where there are multiple live or blank firing arms there may be multiple individuals with those same resposibilities, but ultimately it will still come down to the one in charge.
Repeat after me: A MOVIE SET IS NOT A GUN RANGE. You are not dealing with even twice a year hobbyist shooters. You are not in a controlled environment. The protocols that are used for firearms on set have been developed after decades of trial and error, and these are situations where said error ends in death. Trying to apply range logic to a movie set is what gets people killed, which is why sets do not work like that. You have one dedicated professional whose job is ensuring the safety of everyone on set WRT firearms. At no point did Baldwin have any responsibility to check any weapon as any weapon available to him at that time, by protocol, should have ONLY been a “weapon shaped object.” That is, a chunk of rubber or plastic molded from a real weapon that’s used for doing things like blocking shots (which is what Baldwin was doing) and generally carrying around a scene. Instead, the armorer had zero control over where firearms ended up and Baldwin picked up what he thought was a prop gun. Instead, it was a loaded live firearm. The scene involved Baldwin pointing a gun at the camera and pulling the trigger.
In no way is Baldwin criminally liable here.
Note I say nothing about civil liability. In my opinion, he’s is absolutely responsible for helping create a lax working environment by continuing to employ an armorer that clearly did not give a shit about doing their job properly.
EDIT to mention that Baldwin and the production company VERY quickly came to a settlement agreement with the family of the deceased. They were always going to win so it basically just skipped over a meaningless trial.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-approves-settlement-rust-shooting-lawsuit-halyna-hutchins/story?id=99788957
Might be a good argument for using clearly fake stuff in movies further on. Just hand the actor a TV remote and CGI in a hand gun or a plastic sci-fi “gun” that has no means of firing anything.
George Lucas turned guns into walkie talkies for the E.T. rerelease. Going the other way should be possible.
Baldwin didn’t receive the gun from the armorer. So he wasn’t even following your rules either. He’s still responsible. If he had followed the rules as you stated, upon being handed the gun by the assistant director he should have said “you’re not the armorer” and refused to handle it until it was verified as safe by the armorer.
You’re taking bits and pieces and ignoring the full context, which is a shit thing to do.
This is how it works. This is how the entire legality of the situation is established. As long as everyone is acting in good faith the liability does not fall to them, it falls to the armorer. When Baldwin received the weapon he did so believing it to be a non-firing replica, not an actual loaded firearm, as it would not be proper protocol for a loaded firearm to be available to anyone other than the armorer.
He has already settled the civil liability aspect with the victims and families. That was done rather quickly. As producer, he was liable for the hiring and continual employment of the incompetent armorer. That makes him liable on a civil level.
He has zero criminal culpability here, no matter how hard the DA tries. His roles as producer and actor are legally distinct.
When your holding a firearm, You don’t get to “not my job” basic fucking gun safety.
Professionally, as an actor, it wasn’t Baldwins job. The criminal code doesn’t care what was in his job description
Criminally, it doesn’t matter. There is a long sequence of actions that Baldwin should have taken that he did not take, any one of which would have prevented this from happening.
That sequence:
But nope. Apparently it’s not his job and now someone is fucking dead.
You know literally nothing about anything. I already explained to you why none of your points are relevant. Stop making yourself look like more of an an idiot by continuing to post your ignorance to the world.
Says the guy quoting civil litigation in a discussion of criminal charges. I wasn’t going to go there even if it is like 6th grade civics level…. But now your just being insulting.
Just because another person also had a duty of care- doesn’t mean Baldwin didn’t.
It’s simple tragic fact that Baldwin failed in his obligation to handle a weapon that was fundamentally designed to kill humans in a safe manner. If he had done anything to even half ass checking that weapon Hutchinson would still be alive.
That the armorer failed to do their job, doesn’t change that simple fact. When you’re dealing with things that have “death” as a likely consequence… you don’t rely on a single person, which is why the armrorer is also guilty. They both are.
Nothing you are saying actually changed that Baldwin’s own actions lead directly to it- and if we swap out literally any other actor, that don’t change.
Because he still pointed a weapon fundamentally designed to murder people, at Hutchinson, and pulled the trigger.
Reasonable people don’t do that without excessive amounts of paranoia- including checking a firearm that takes ten seconds to safely check.
I find some humor in the wiki link you provided for duty of care, the first sentence starts with “In tort law” as you keep trying to use it for criminal law.
There are no legal requirements for firearm handling that requires someone to check for a load. When you, and many others, say “the first rule of firearms” I invite you to provide us with a legal definition of these rules.
There is no expectation for a non-expert to identify the differences between blanks, dummy, and live rounds.
While there was likely gross negligence on the set, I’m not sure it rises to the level of criminal liability. A film set is a unique situation where there are different rules to firearm handling. This is a simple fact that cannot be overlooked. The rules of firearms as you have been trained on and as you understand them simply don’t apply.
Lol.
So your saying that an adult picking up a firearm and waiving it around cocking it and pulling the trigger (accidentally or otherwise,) isn’t negligent when that firearm happens to go off?
Yes that article mostly covers tort law which is civil. esp. In this case the negligence rose to the level of criminality, and the test for duty of care applied to show he was being negligent.
Oh, by the way. The armorer wasn’t even on site. He was handed the weapon by a non-expert who declared it cold. Adding another failed check: “hey you’re not the armorer!” Would have also saved his victim’s life.
But nope. They had a schedule to keep. So whatever. What’s the worst that could happen?
You’re acting like Baldwin is not a reasonable human- he’s not a toddler who you would have no expectation of knowing “hey maybe I shouldn’t do this”. That it was on set in a staged scenario doesn’t absolve people of their personal responsibility.
Wow, your feelings got so hurt that you went ad hominem. Congratulations on proving that you don’t have a point to stand on.