Counter point: one of my friends is a retired PJ. He was a professional soldier who was involved in armed conflict for years. He knows his way around weapons and absolutely does not fuck around.
We go hunting together, and he owns a lot of very nice guns. Even if he hands me a gun and tells me it’s clear, I still check it. I check it because it’s my responsibility to make sure I know what I’m doing when I’m holding the power of life and death in my hands. I check it if we’re just hanging out at his house, or if we’re zeroing in rifles. I’ve never found one of his guns to be loaded when he didn’t intend it to be, but I have found live rounds in other people’s “safe” guns.
Even if an “expert” on firearms tells you a gun is safe, it’s still a gun that’s in your hands. If it goes off, it’s on you if it kills someone. If you can’t be bothered to take the 30 minutes needed to learn how to check any firearm made in past 200 years, then you have no business touching any gun anywhere. That goes double if your job involves handling firearms in any capacity. If you regularly come into contact with guns, wether you’re a soldier, or cop, or an actor who does action movies, it’s your responsibility to know how guns work and when they’re safe and when they’re not.
Everyone keeps bringing up Brandon Lee when this shooting comes up. But these are grossly different situations. With Brandon, the gun was loaded with blanks, and the blank pushed a bullet that was stuck in the barrel of the gun out. Even if the actor had done a basic check to ensure the gun was only loaded with blanks, it’s entirely reasonable that he did not look down the barrel to make sure it wasn’t blocked. That I would agree falls on the armorer, they were using blanks on set, the Armorer should have made sure the gun was safe to operate with them. With Hutchins on the set of Rust, it would have been obvious that those were real bullets if he had looked at them. Prop bullets for revolvers or other shots where you see whole rounds are supposed to have the back of the bullet drilled out and/or a rattle installed in the shell so they can be identified as inert. A 5 second check would have identified the bullets were real and something was wrong.
He was handed a gun, didn’t check it, and shot a woman.
To put it another way: I use fall arrest harnesses for my job pretty frequently. My employer has a safety guy who maintains our equipment and is ultimately responsible for it. Do some of my coworkers take his word for it when he okays our harnesses, yes. Do I? fuck no. I always inspect my harness and report if something looks frayed or worn down. It’s my ass that works near the edge of a 100 foot drop, not Mr safety. Just because it’s someone’s job to do something doesn’t mean they’ll do it 100% perfect all the time, and when something involves a decent chance of death or terrible injury, it needs to be a 100% on job performance. So don’t rely on one person to be on the ball all the time. If something is deadly, it’s worth looking at twice or even three times to make sure it’s really safe.
While I largely agree, I still don’t fully agree. He should have treated it as loaded because it’s a gun, but I also understand why he didn’t. There are many dangerous facets in our lives where we trust professionals, like doctors and pilots and chefs. Professionals that count on other professionals doing their job and keeping the whole system running.
You can extra prepare, and argue that everyone should at all times, but its also entirely reasonable that we dont run background checks on pilots or breathalyze them before they get onto a plane. We expect the system to work for many dangerous things, and it almost always does. The fact that it almost always does is part of the issue here, because believing the armorer was doing their job to keep people safe is a reasonable assumption.
Should he have applied extra caution to checking that gun? You bet. Do I think he was complacent because of the systems they had on set for gun safety? Yes. Do I think that rises to murder or even extreme negligence? No. It was a lapse in judgement that ended with him killing a person, and that is terrible, but not criminal.
But he wasn’t just a passenger like someone going on vacation. That person would have very little power to do anything about a pilot being possibly high or drunk.
Baldwin was more like the copilot to the drunk captain. He had plenty of power to say something was wrong, and had the responsibility to double check.
If your plane crashed because Captain Morgan the drunk ace missed a safety check, and you and the copilot survived, you would just shrug and say “well we all rely on professionals and this one just slipped through the cracks” you don’t think the copilot has any responsibility for not saying anything or at least double checking the pilot and speaking up if something didn’t look right?
We can trust dangerous things because there’s many people out there that do have jobs that involve double checking other people’s work. A commercial pilot has a copilot who shares the work, monitors instruments, and makes sure the checklists get followed properly. Doctors have nurses that help asses the patient for everything from symptoms to verifying if it’s the right or left leg that’s getting cut off today. Chefs have city health inspectors whose whole job is to come in and make sure the kitchen is clean and they aren’t serving rat shit in with the chili.
So when your job involves guns: famous for being rapidly deadly things, shouldn’t it fall on somebody to at least take a peak and make sure everything looks in order? And just like the pilot and copilot have to make sure the plane is in working order because it’s their responsibility, the actor who is going to be holding the gun should check it and speak up because the gun is their responsibility.
I agree with your points, but I object to this statement:
Even if the actor had done a basic check to ensure the gun was only loaded with blanks, it’s entirely reasonable that he did not look down the barrel to make sure it wasn’t blocked.
You and I have very different definitions of “basic check.” Especially when using blanks, checking that the barrel is clear is (a) not hard, and (b) should be considered part of a basic check. It’s no harder than pointing the barrel at a light source - of which, on a set, there will be any number of bright options - and looking through the open breech to see on there’s light.
That said, what baffles me about the entire industry is that they use real guns at all. Or that they don’t just buy whatever real gun they want and weld-plug the barrel; even an expensive handgun is going to cost them $2k - the welder’s time might double that. An extra $4k is peanuts to any professional production. Shit, there must be a company who’s entire business is providing prop gun rentals to movies. You’re already employing prop people, like Adam Savage; have them replace the front part of the barrel with a solid rod of steel. It has to be cheaper than employing an armoror, and safer than relying on processes.
This part, I’ve never understood. Maybe someone can explain it: why does anyone have to - and why does the industry allow - anyone using Union labor to use real, functioning guns?
Counter point: one of my friends is a retired PJ. He was a professional soldier who was involved in armed conflict for years. He knows his way around weapons and absolutely does not fuck around.
We go hunting together, and he owns a lot of very nice guns. Even if he hands me a gun and tells me it’s clear, I still check it. I check it because it’s my responsibility to make sure I know what I’m doing when I’m holding the power of life and death in my hands. I check it if we’re just hanging out at his house, or if we’re zeroing in rifles. I’ve never found one of his guns to be loaded when he didn’t intend it to be, but I have found live rounds in other people’s “safe” guns.
Even if an “expert” on firearms tells you a gun is safe, it’s still a gun that’s in your hands. If it goes off, it’s on you if it kills someone. If you can’t be bothered to take the 30 minutes needed to learn how to check any firearm made in past 200 years, then you have no business touching any gun anywhere. That goes double if your job involves handling firearms in any capacity. If you regularly come into contact with guns, wether you’re a soldier, or cop, or an actor who does action movies, it’s your responsibility to know how guns work and when they’re safe and when they’re not.
Everyone keeps bringing up Brandon Lee when this shooting comes up. But these are grossly different situations. With Brandon, the gun was loaded with blanks, and the blank pushed a bullet that was stuck in the barrel of the gun out. Even if the actor had done a basic check to ensure the gun was only loaded with blanks, it’s entirely reasonable that he did not look down the barrel to make sure it wasn’t blocked. That I would agree falls on the armorer, they were using blanks on set, the Armorer should have made sure the gun was safe to operate with them. With Hutchins on the set of Rust, it would have been obvious that those were real bullets if he had looked at them. Prop bullets for revolvers or other shots where you see whole rounds are supposed to have the back of the bullet drilled out and/or a rattle installed in the shell so they can be identified as inert. A 5 second check would have identified the bullets were real and something was wrong.
He was handed a gun, didn’t check it, and shot a woman.
To put it another way: I use fall arrest harnesses for my job pretty frequently. My employer has a safety guy who maintains our equipment and is ultimately responsible for it. Do some of my coworkers take his word for it when he okays our harnesses, yes. Do I? fuck no. I always inspect my harness and report if something looks frayed or worn down. It’s my ass that works near the edge of a 100 foot drop, not Mr safety. Just because it’s someone’s job to do something doesn’t mean they’ll do it 100% perfect all the time, and when something involves a decent chance of death or terrible injury, it needs to be a 100% on job performance. So don’t rely on one person to be on the ball all the time. If something is deadly, it’s worth looking at twice or even three times to make sure it’s really safe.
While I largely agree, I still don’t fully agree. He should have treated it as loaded because it’s a gun, but I also understand why he didn’t. There are many dangerous facets in our lives where we trust professionals, like doctors and pilots and chefs. Professionals that count on other professionals doing their job and keeping the whole system running.
You can extra prepare, and argue that everyone should at all times, but its also entirely reasonable that we dont run background checks on pilots or breathalyze them before they get onto a plane. We expect the system to work for many dangerous things, and it almost always does. The fact that it almost always does is part of the issue here, because believing the armorer was doing their job to keep people safe is a reasonable assumption.
Should he have applied extra caution to checking that gun? You bet. Do I think he was complacent because of the systems they had on set for gun safety? Yes. Do I think that rises to murder or even extreme negligence? No. It was a lapse in judgement that ended with him killing a person, and that is terrible, but not criminal.
But he wasn’t just a passenger like someone going on vacation. That person would have very little power to do anything about a pilot being possibly high or drunk.
Baldwin was more like the copilot to the drunk captain. He had plenty of power to say something was wrong, and had the responsibility to double check.
If your plane crashed because Captain Morgan the drunk ace missed a safety check, and you and the copilot survived, you would just shrug and say “well we all rely on professionals and this one just slipped through the cracks” you don’t think the copilot has any responsibility for not saying anything or at least double checking the pilot and speaking up if something didn’t look right?
We can trust dangerous things because there’s many people out there that do have jobs that involve double checking other people’s work. A commercial pilot has a copilot who shares the work, monitors instruments, and makes sure the checklists get followed properly. Doctors have nurses that help asses the patient for everything from symptoms to verifying if it’s the right or left leg that’s getting cut off today. Chefs have city health inspectors whose whole job is to come in and make sure the kitchen is clean and they aren’t serving rat shit in with the chili.
So when your job involves guns: famous for being rapidly deadly things, shouldn’t it fall on somebody to at least take a peak and make sure everything looks in order? And just like the pilot and copilot have to make sure the plane is in working order because it’s their responsibility, the actor who is going to be holding the gun should check it and speak up because the gun is their responsibility.
I agree with your points, but I object to this statement:
You and I have very different definitions of “basic check.” Especially when using blanks, checking that the barrel is clear is (a) not hard, and (b) should be considered part of a basic check. It’s no harder than pointing the barrel at a light source - of which, on a set, there will be any number of bright options - and looking through the open breech to see on there’s light.
That said, what baffles me about the entire industry is that they use real guns at all. Or that they don’t just buy whatever real gun they want and weld-plug the barrel; even an expensive handgun is going to cost them $2k - the welder’s time might double that. An extra $4k is peanuts to any professional production. Shit, there must be a company who’s entire business is providing prop gun rentals to movies. You’re already employing prop people, like Adam Savage; have them replace the front part of the barrel with a solid rod of steel. It has to be cheaper than employing an armoror, and safer than relying on processes.
This part, I’ve never understood. Maybe someone can explain it: why does anyone have to - and why does the industry allow - anyone using Union labor to use real, functioning guns?