A few more details about the charges against Alec Baldwin are out today.
It's interesting to note that the police said Baldwin's role as a producer was part of the reason he was charged. Hopefully that means they see this as a top down failure to follow safety protocols and they are not going down the path of actors need to be responsible for gun safety.Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have been criminally charged.
Charges filed against Alec Baldwin for ‘extremely reckless acts’ on Rust set
The actor maintains his innocence and plans to fight the charge of involuntary slaughter of cinematographer Halyna Hutchinswww.theguardian.com
I wish we had more regulations requiring the use of firearms in the US, especially in the case of theater and entertainment. As I understand its very much up to each jurisdiction with some having absolutely no requirements whatsoever. I remember assisting a high school a few years as a consultant which they wanted to use a shotgun on stage just as a visual prop (no rounds whats over). We did the safest thing possible and removed the shotguns ability to fire by removing the firing pin, and plugging the barrel. It was locked in a safe in the fine arts directors locked office and only 2 people had the key to the safe, myself and the fine arts director. It came out of the safe when it was about to go on deck and right back in after it came off.Looking at this from an Antipodean perspective, it boggles me. I had an experience a few months ago where we were doing Carmen on an island in the middle of Sydney Harbour (yeah, another Opera Australia outdoor extravaganza!). We had an issue with a harp which meant we had to get a replacement out there (put harp on truck, put truck on barge, go the 500m to the island on the barge, drive truck off barge, unload and swap harps over!) and the same day, Props was taking over a crate of rifles as well. Replica weapons, completely unable to fire anything except blanks. Couldn’t fire live rounds if we wanted them to.
As it happened, it was exceptionally windy that day, so much so that the usual barge wasn’t able to operate and we had to use a smaller one, and even then we were severely delayed waiting for the wind to drop. Because we were delayed, we ended up putting the rifle case in our truck with the harp (couldn’t get both our truck and the props van on the barge, and no time to do a second barge trip) and despite the fact that the case was padlocked and in a locked truck, with the on-site props master waiting on the island to receive them, we had to take the licensed props staff member who was delivering them on the truck on the barge with us, because she physically could not legally let them out of her custody except to hand them over to another licensed staff member (the on-site props master), even for the ten minutes it would take to get across the harbour, and I am pretty sure the police had been notified about the movement of the weapons. The hoops you have to jump through to get a theatrical firearms license here are not insignificant. I can’t help thinking that some sort of licensing requirements in this Rust situation may have saved the DOP’s life.
This is exactly what we are doing with the ESTA TSP weapons safety working group which is creating an ANSI standard with all the players at the table. Equity, SAG. IATSE, studios, producers, armorers.I wish we had more regulations requiring the use of firearms in the US, especially in the case of theater and entertainment. As I understand its very much up to each jurisdiction with some having absolutely no requirements whatsoever. I remember assisting a high school a few years as a consultant which they wanted to use a shotgun on stage just as a visual prop (no rounds whats over). We did the safest thing possible and removed the shotguns ability to fire by removing the firing pin, and plugging the barrel. It was locked in a safe in the fine arts directors locked office and only 2 people had the key to the safe, myself and the fine arts director. It came out of the safe when it was about to go on deck and right back in after it came off.
Then working on a professional touring theater I watched as 6 rifles fully intact were stored in a wooden box behind a cheep lock and a little clasp that could have easily been broken into with no regard to safety apart from at the end of the night being locked up until the next day.
I feel as a community (IATSE and AEA) we could draft up some rules in regard to firearm use and safety that are a requirement for all contracts, instead of just suggestions.
We look forward to hearing on-going progress reports from this activity.This is exactly what we are doing with the ESTA TSP weapons safety working group which is creating an ANSI standard with all the players at the table. Equity, SAG. IATSE, studios, producers, armorers.
Several of our members here participating on that working group.
And in the US the ATF is very clear as to what constitutes a firearm, and state and federal law apply regardless of it being used as a prop or not.
Haven't heard that at all.There's rumours flying around that Baldwin himself put the live round in the gun in between shoots to do some recreational shooting! Sounds like complete baloney to me, but have any of you stateside members, who are closer to what's going on, heard any such rumours or where they're coming from?
There were rumors very early on about some sort of training or recreational shooting happening. If I remember correctly, this might have been part of a large group of accusations that came from the union. There were a bunch of things alleged very early that have faded from what seems to be the story. I have not seen anything recently about any recreational shooting.There's rumours flying around that Baldwin himself put the live round in the gun in between shoots to do some recreational shooting! Sounds like complete baloney to me, but have any of you stateside members, who are closer to what's going on, heard any such rumours or where they're coming from?
Yeah yesterday charges against Alec Baldwin were dropped. That further suggests that there is at least no evidence that he loaded the gun.Does sound like it might just be muck raking.
More likely they were dropped because the district attorney and special prosecutors were replaced, one of whom became an elected rep to the statehouse for the GOP and the Baldwin charges may have been a good way to initially get their name in the papers in that election cycle. This could just be the new team slow-burning it and reviewing everything from top to bottom, reserving the right to refile if a thorough review of the evidence reveals it's worthwhile.Short version... Charges against Baldwin were dropped because of new evidence. No hints about what that is.
The article is here.
The new evidence, the source said, centers on the revolver that discharged a live round while Baldwin was holding it, striking Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
The weapon had at some point been fitted with a new hammer, calling into question previous conclusions from the FBI crime lab that the weapon could not have fired without the trigger being pulled, the source added.
David Houliston, an attorney who represents Seth Kenney, the owner of the prop company that supplied guns and ammunition for the Rust set, said in a phone interview his client didn’t make any modifications to the weapon.
“It came to him from the distributor just days before he sent it to the set … and was completely unadulterated by Kenney and his company,” Houliston said. “It was not altered, touched, modified or tampered with at all.”
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, whose department headed the investigation into the shooting, declined to comment Thursday.
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