Here at That Park Place, we’ve gone over the situation with Alec Baldwin and his production company on the set of Rust, a western movie. For a variety of bad actions, a tragic and avoidable accident occurred that left his director of photography shot and killed. Now, police reports are coming out that confirm some of the issues we previously identified, while adding more poor decision points made the day of the shooting. For review, we identified here at this site that it is extraordinarily strange and dangerous for someone to point a gun of any type — real, unloaded, prop, toy — at another human being, and this is unusual even on movie sets. We also brought to light that the “prop gun” being used on set was handled by someone who felt she might not be up for the gig… and the gun had misfired on set already.
With the police report out, now we’re getting even more bad news that shows how such an accident occurred. Let’s take it step by step:
First, the gun in question had already misfired multiple times on set. That’s not the worst thing about this particular gun, however. It turns out that the exact gun which was part of the tragic accident was also the same gun being used on set for “live target practice“. To use a gun on a movie set for live target practice is both frivolous and stupid. It is easy to see how live ammo would remain in a pistol that had been used to fire at targets, almost certainly just for fun. Twenty-four year old Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer on set, almost certainly has big questions to answer in regards to this… even if she had felt she was out of her league taking care of the guns.
https://twitter.com/mags_mclaugh/status/1451679048506171392
The next thing we are learning is more of a technical issue. Because of COVID restrictions, Gutierrez Reed was not allowed in the mock church where Baldwin received the gun. Instead, assistant director Dave Halls took the gun from Gutierrez Reed, walked inside with it, and called out “Cold Gun”. Ideally, you want the armorer to hand the “prop” to an actor, not have different transit points in between. A question police will want to know is whether there were multiple guns that Halls took with him. This could be one way in which a pistol with live ammunition is mistakenly given as a prop.
These bad decision points seem to be part of a pattern, considering six crew members had walked off set the same day over safety concerns.
The final, and most serious mistake, is that Baldwin was demonstrating how he would unholster the gun for the scene about to be filmed. In his demonstration, the gun was moved in such a way that it was momentarily pointed at people — at least the two who were injured but possibly more. When the gun misfired (for the third time during filming), it shot a bullet that hit Halyna Hutchins in the chest. Based on the affidavits, Mrs. Hutchins was likely struck in the spinal cord, as she collapsed and said she could not feel her legs. She would later succumb to her injury while in transit to the hospital.
Three different people had the opportunity to prevent that shooting.
They all failed, they are all culpable.
— British Guns (@BritGuns) October 23, 2021
Reports now are that Alec Baldwin was inconsolable after the shooting. It’s a heartbreaking and awful tragedy that will affect many people for the rest of their lives. We should all be saddened for everyone who was involved in this, and certainly for those who are victims. People make mistakes. That said, in this situation, a series of mistakes occurred out of negligence or ignorance, and it’s likely there will be charges (in my opinion) based on the information coming from law enforcement. In summary, a pistol that was known to misfire was used for live target practice, crew members walked off because of safety concerns, there was a disjointed hand-off of the gun that potentially allowed for confusion, and the gun was later pointed at human beings by an actor.
We can all identify times in our lives when we have acted sloppily with objects that can cause injury. Unfortunately, sometimes behaving in such a way can and does catch up. In this case, Baldwin’s production company may be in a great deal of hot water.
