NM: Hand gun with trigger pulled by Alec Baldwin in rehearsal kills one injures one

[G.A. Heath]

I'd like to know the bottom line. HOW that live bullet got in there in the first place. Who, exactly, put it in there? Were all 6 bullets live, or just that one? Maybe a disgruntled employee is in the picture - 7 people walked off the set that morning. If all 6 bullets were live, fingerprints should be on them. SURELY the investigators checked everything for prints....?

Where did the ammo come from, anyway? Not many people have a supply of .45 Long Colt sitting around. And remember this is in California, where you do a background check to buy ammo.

As far as Baldwin checking the gun, that sort of makes sense, but at the same time, making a movie like this may involve many retakes of various scenes, or many scenes involving a gun. Is the actor expected to empty the gun and examine the ammo EVERY SINGLE time it's used in a scene? Look at the John Wick movies; is Keanu supposed to work all the bullets out of that semi-auto magazine, check the ammo, and reload it, every time he fires it? I doubt it. If he did, he'd spend all day unloading/reloading magazines.

But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know, seems like there's an awful lot of unanswered questions in this situation.

This actually happened in New Mexico, and as for the comparison to the John Wick movies. If you are firing blanks it's pretty easy to look down the front of the magazine. And I strongly suspect the John Wick movies do not use ammo for practical effects, most likely they use special effects since between the cost of Keanu and ammo they would go over budget pretty quick!

[03Lightningrocks]

https://theragingpatriot.org/2021/10/26 ... 5-Nm1pm9GI

“Involuntary Manslaughter”, “18 Months In Prison”; Alec Baldwin Could Face Charges Over Death Of Halyna Hutchins

[KC5AV]

Where did the ammo come from, anyway? Not many people have a supply of .45 Long Colt sitting around. And remember this is in California, where you do a background check to buy ammo.

I read somewhere that there is speculation that the gun had been used for 'target practice', which explains the live round(s).

[G.A. Heath]

Where did the ammo come from, anyway? Not many people have a supply of .45 Long Colt sitting around. And remember this is in California, where you do a background check to buy ammo.

I read somewhere that there is speculation that the gun had been used for 'target practice', which explains the live round(s).

Considering that there was a reported "Strike" by some of the union crew over reported safety concerns I wouldn't be surprised if the live round wasn't a "lesson" to the cast and crew by those who walked off the set and/or were on strike.

[chasfm11]

Where did the ammo come from, anyway? Not many people have a supply of .45 Long Colt sitting around. And remember this is in California, where you do a background check to buy ammo.

I read somewhere that there is speculation that the gun had been used for 'target practice', which explains the live round(s).

Considering that there was a reported "Strike" by some of the union crew over reported safety concerns I wouldn't be surprised if the live round wasn't a "lesson" to the cast and crew by those who walked off the set and/or were on strike.

I'm voting for incompetence rather than malice.

[G.A. Heath]

While I personally lean towards 100% incompetence myself this is a rare situation where both Occam's razor and Hanlon's razor might apply. I just want to make it clear that malice on the part of a third party is a possible factor in this tragedy.

[Paladin]

[03Lightningrocks]

They just did a news conference. Did not give much info on who was to be charged but they said there were 500 rounds of ammo on the set. They also mentioned that Alec Baldwin failed to check the gun before handling it. I just don't see how they avoid charging Alec Baldwin with criminal negligence at the least.

[powerboatr]

They just did a news conference. Did not give much info on who was to be charged but they said there were 500 rounds of ammo on the set. They also mentioned that Alec Baldwin failed to check the gun before handling it. I just don't see how they avoid charging Alec Baldwin with criminal negligence at the least.

aagreed

[philip964]

They just did a news conference. Did not give much info on who was to be charged but they said there were 500 rounds of ammo on the set. They also mentioned that Alec Baldwin failed to check the gun before handling it. I just don't see how they avoid charging Alec Baldwin with criminal negligence at the least.

aagreed

Aagreed. Why did he pull the trigger? They were not filming.

[Paladin]

They just did a news conference. Did not give much info on who was to be charged but they said there were 500 rounds of ammo on the set. They also mentioned that Alec Baldwin failed to check the gun before handling it. I just don't see how they avoid charging Alec Baldwin with criminal negligence at the least.

aagreed

Aagreed. Why did he pull the trigger? They were not filming.

The story is it was late in the day and they needed to re-"shoot" a scene and Baldwin grabbed a gun and blasted away at the individuals saying he was going to shoot them instead (in jest). It does appear to be criminal negligence, but I would expect that the local authorities will want to be very certain before an indictment is made. Don't know how New Mexico works with Grand Juries.

[Chemist45]

Paladin wrote:

The story is it was late in the day and they needed to re-"shoot" a scene and Baldwin grabbed a gun and blasted away at the individuals saying he was going to shoot them instead (in jest). It does appear to be criminal negligence, but I would expect that the local authorities will want to be very certain before an indictment is made. Don't know how New Mexico works with Grand Juries.

Say what?!?!!?!?
If true this is criminal negligence. Alec needs to go away for a long time.
Do you have a source for this?

[03Lightningrocks]

Paladin wrote:

The story is it was late in the day and they needed to re-"shoot" a scene and Baldwin grabbed a gun and blasted away at the individuals saying he was going to shoot them instead (in jest). It does appear to be criminal negligence, but I would expect that the local authorities will want to be very certain before an indictment is made. Don't know how New Mexico works with Grand Juries.

Say what?!?!!?!?
If true this is criminal negligence. Alec needs to go away for a long time.
Do you have a source for this?

I did not hear this story. Wow! If true, Alec is on his way to jail. Do you have a link? I can't find it anywhere.

[Paladin]

oljames3 gets the credit:

Let me be clear—I have no idea if what I’m about to describe will turn out to accurately describe the events in this case. I read such a description of the events online, but have no idea if the person providing that description has any idea what they are talking about. Here we’re using that description of events not as a claim that they represent what actually happened, but merely as a hypothetical to explore the legal issues that could arise in this case.

The day was running long, the actors and crew were getting tired, another scene had to be shot yet again, and in an effort to add some levity to the circumstances Alec Baldwin, holding a firearm in his hands that he believed to be unloaded, jokingly told the director of photography Ms. Hutchins and director Joel Souza, “We have to shoot that scene again? How about if I just shoot you both, instead.” He then points the firearm at them and depresses the trigger, resulting in the gun discharging, killing Ms. Hutchins, and wounding Mr. Souza.

In that last hypothetical we have no innocent accident, and we have no mere civil negligence—instead, we have, with the pointing of the weapon at the victims and the deliberate press of the trigger, criminal recklessness.

https://lawofselfdefense.com/alec-baldw ... slaughter/

[Rafe]

oljames3 gets the credit:

Let me be clear—I have no idea if what I’m about to describe will turn out to accurately describe the events in this case. I read such a description of the events online, but have no idea if the person providing that description has any idea what they are talking about. Here we’re using that description of events not as a claim that they represent what actually happened, but merely as a hypothetical to explore the legal issues that could arise in this case.

The day was running long, the actors and crew were getting tired, another scene had to be shot yet again, and in an effort to add some levity to the circumstances Alec Baldwin, holding a firearm in his hands that he believed to be unloaded, jokingly told the director of photography Ms. Hutchins and director Joel Souza, “We have to shoot that scene again? How about if I just shoot you both, instead.” He then points the firearm at them and depresses the trigger, resulting in the gun discharging, killing Ms. Hutchins, and wounding Mr. Souza.

In that last hypothetical we have no innocent accident, and we have no mere civil negligence—instead, we have, with the pointing of the weapon at the victims and the deliberate press of the trigger, criminal recklessness.

https://lawofselfdefense.com/alec-baldw ... slaughter/

Except we've continued to learn things that make that description improbable, on the chronology front at least. The timeline that surfaced was that the set broke for lunch at about 12:30. The "armorer" now claims that all firearms were locked in a safe during lunch, while earlier reports said that they were placed on a cart and left there at a location some distance away from where lunch was being served. The armorer has said that ammunition (unclear whether blanks, primer-only loads, live rounds, whatever) was not placed in a safe however...neither of which description tells us if the revolver Baldwin shot had been properly unloaded and inspected both before and after lunch.

The 911 call came into the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office at approximately 1:50; it would seem to stand to reason that this was the first scene Baldwin was involved in after the lunch break. So it couldn't have been near the end of some tiring day on set, or that it involved a retake of a scene that had just been filmed multiple times in a row.

At today's press conference, Sheriff Adan Mendoza said that the incident happened during an on-set rehearsal of a scene, which is why there was no camera footage of the shooting. A prior report said that Baldwin was to make a cross-draw presentation of the revolver during the scene, and that this is what he was rehearsing when he fired the gun. That Hutchins, Souza, and a B-camera operator were nearby assessing shot angles (often called "blocking") when Baldwin did a cross-draw with the revolver twice, reholstering it after the first one, then firing the gun when he presented it a second time.

At the press conference, the Sheriff said that the gun used was a "FD Pietta Long Colt .45." I'm not certain about the "FD" part, but my guess is that it was a Pietta 1873 .45 Long Colt Single Action Army. Pietta is an Italian company that makes historic firearm reproductions; they are not the real antiques, and many are quite reasonably priced: http://piettausa.com/. If it was a SA revolver as the period of the film would have called for, then that means Baldwin didn't just practice his cross-draw and have an "accidental discharge." He would have had to take the extra step of cocking the hammer before he pulled the trigger.

The Sheriff said the gun has been turned over to the FBI for forensics. Also recovered was the shell casing in the cylinder, and a "lead projectile" that had been removed at the hospital from director Joel Souza's shoulder. The press conference made it seem clear that this "lead projectile" was the same round that killed Halyna Hutchins.