Alec Baldwin

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Am I missing something here? Alec Baldwin was on a film set. Live ammunition is not allowed on a film set. Actors shoot guns on film sets all the time. Film sets employ ammunition experts who take care of ammunition and firearms on said film sets. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the actors. Actors have every right to believe it when they are told that the guns they are handling don't have live ammunition in them. They don't have any choice. Brandon Lee was shot and killed on a film set by another actor yet no one was ever charged, certainly not the actor who rightfully believe that the gun had blanks in it.
A lot of people don't like Alec Baldwin's politics, therefore, according to American Republican intellectual giants, he MUST be guilty of SOMETHING (they don't seem to know 'what' exactly) because a person's politics is the definitive yardstick for measuring a person's guilt or innocence in events that have absolutely nothing to do with politics.
Now, could the gun-toting religious nut-job American Trump-loving Republicans on here (you know who you are) explain to me what exactly Alec Baldwin is 'guilty' of, since it's a given that you will be in the 'guilty Baldwin corner' because he doesn't vote the same way you do (which is guilt, in and of itself).

The only possible guilty party is whoever took live ammunition onto the filmset.

Besides. Y'all love guns so much. What do you think guns do? Shouldn't y'all be applauding him for not using those 'pussy dummy bullets'?

[Flannel Jesus]

The only possible guilty party is whoever took live ammunition onto the filmset.

I've read that there WAS a hired gun safety expert, but that person was hired through nepotism and was not really qualified or experienced in their role. So that person had a bit of a negligent role in all of it.

And then another person on set had the idea to start preparing for a scene involving the gun without waiting for or getting the gun safety expert to set. So that person had a negligent role in it.

Basically, multiple layers of negligence and bad hiring procedure resulted in this terrible accident.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

The only possible guilty party is whoever took live ammunition onto the filmset.

I've read that there WAS a hired gun safety expert, but that person was hired through nepotism and was not really qualified or experienced in their role. So that person had a bit of a negligent role in all of it.

And then another person on set had the idea to start preparing for a scene involving the gun without waiting for or getting the gun safety expert to set. So that person had a negligent role in it.

Basically, multiple layers of negligence and bad hiring procedure resulted in this terrible accident.

Still nothing to do with Alec Baldwin. If anything he's the LEAST guilty party, unless he hired the ammunition 'expert' himself.

[Flannel Jesus]

Yes, I obviously can't know the whole story but it would seem that he's a victim in this too. If that's the case then...

[mickthinks]

It's not the actors' responsibility. Rather it is the production team, for whom the executive producers are ultimately responsible.

Alec Baldwin is an executive producer of the film Rust.

[Flannel Jesus]

Yes it may very well be that some of the corner cutting and negligence is on him too. Hmmm

[Skepdick]

Still nothing to do with Alec Baldwin. If anything he's the LEAST guilty party, unless he hired the ammunition 'expert' himself.

The Fundamentals of Firearm Safety

* Always assume all guns are loaded.
* The only unloaded gun in the entire world is the one that you have in your hand and have personally verified as unloaded. If you set it down and take your hand off from it, it becomes a loaded gun again.
* Keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot.
* Control the muzzle - Don't point the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy. Never point a firearm at yourself or others.
* Know your target and make sure you identify what you are shooting at and know what lies in front of and beyond it.

These are not law, but they are mantra within the firearm community.

In the eyes of every single gun owner Alec Baldwin broke all five rules which makes him negligent and irresponsible and therefore guilty of manslaughter.

He ignored the rules - somebody died.

[Skepdick]

It's not the actors' responsibility.

It's the responsibility of every person who picks up any gun.

The Fundamentals of Firearm Safety

* Always assume all guns are loaded.
* The only unloaded gun in the entire world is the one that you have in your hand and have personally verified as unloaded. If you set it down and take your hand off from it, it becomes a loaded gun again.
* Keep your finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot.
* Control the muzzle - Don't point the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy. Never point a firearm at yourself or others.
* Know your target and make sure you identify what you are shooting at and know what lies in front of and beyond it.

If you want any evidence as to why ... well I heard this Alec Baldwin guy accidentally shot a person with an "unloaded" gun.

See rule 1 and 2.

[Skepdick]

I've read that there WAS a hired gun safety expert, but that person was hired through nepotism and was not really qualified or experienced in their role. So that person had a bit of a negligent role in all of it.

And then another person on set had the idea to start preparing for a scene involving the gun without waiting for or getting the gun safety expert to set. So that person had a negligent role in it.

Basically, multiple layers of negligence and bad hiring procedure resulted in this terrible accident.

And that's precisely how diffusion of responsibility plays out. Everybody thinks the other guy did it right.

That's why every person handling the firearms needs to perform the safety checks for themselves.

Or use fake guns on set so you don't have to deal with the headache of safety protocols.

[Iwannaplato]

Am I missing something here? Alec Baldwin was on a film set. Live ammunition is not allowed on a film set. Actors shoot guns on film sets all the time. Film sets employ ammunition experts who take care of ammunition and firearms on said film sets. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the actors. Actors have every right to believe it when they are told that the guns they are handling don't have live ammunition in them. They don't have any choice. Brandon Lee was shot and killed on a film set by another actor yet no one was ever charged, certainly not the actor who rightfully believe that the gun had blanks in it.
A lot of people don't like Alec Baldwin's politics, therefore, according to American Republican intellectual giants, he MUST be guilty of SOMETHING (they don't seem to know 'what' exactly) because a person's politics is the definitive yardstick for measuring a person's guilt or innocence in events that have absolutely nothing to do with politics.
Now, could the gun-toting religious nut-job American Trump-loving Republicans on here (you know who you are) explain to me what exactly Alec Baldwin is 'guilty' of, since it's a given that you will be in the 'guilty Baldwin corner' because he doesn't vote the same way you do (which is guilt, in and of itself).

The only possible guilty party is whoever took live ammunition onto the filmset.

Besides. Y'all love guns so much. What do you think guns do? Shouldn't y'all be applauding him for not using those 'pussy dummy bullets'?

He had a live round in his gunbelt (not placed there by the armorer). He broke procedure by pointing the gun at the person he shot when he should not have. IOW he went against gun use on set protocols and he's been on sets with guns for a long time and had the double role as producer. There had been incidents on set involving live fire on set, which he knew about. IOW it was known on a set he was producer on that live rounds were getting into film guns. He also had tension or dispute with this person. He's not being charged for intentionally doing this, but given all the facts, this would have been a possible charge. We do not know that the armorer failed though she is also charged. But for all we know she did her job. Why the hell did have a live round on his gunbelt? Why did he point the gun at her and pull the trigger?

Personally, I think he was criminally negligent, at least. What the exact charge should be, I don't know. Above my paygrade. I don't care about his politics. My guess is we overlap quite a bit, but I don't know. I can't take the politics of celebrities seriously. I wouldn't let a celebrity fix my leaky kitchen sink pipe, spay my cat, teach comparative religion or, yeah, advise me on politics. What do they know about the real world?

[iambiguous]

This is a classic example of the gap between what each of us as individuals thinks about something and everything that it is possible to know about something.

The incident on the Rust set occurs. We read about it, hear about it and react.

Depending of course on what we read and what we hear. Depending further on such things as our own political prejudices rooted existentially in dasein. Depending finally on all of the facts that can be gathered about the event.

Some will emphasize one set of facts, others another set of facts. But which set of facts reflects the optimal or even the only rational manner in which to evaluate and judge an event?

That's why even in the either/or world of facts, mere mortals are still stuck with subjective points of view.

To wit:

I recall the courtroom scene from the film Reversal of Fortune. Sunny von Bülow is hovering like a ghost above the proceedings below. Speculating on what the outcome of the trial might be. Now, there was "the fact of the matter": Claus is either guilty or not guilty of putting her into an irreversible coma. The jury acquitted him. But was their own decision in fact the right one?

In a No God world there is often no way to get around this even in the either/or world.

In the Rust incident however there is considerably more ambiguity. There's the fact that Baldwin did what he did. Everyone there saw it. But there are also all the facts that can be accumulated such that those on both sides are able to make reasonable arguments for or against his culpability.

Then the objectivists on both sides who insist that, no, unless you think as I do, you are flat out wrong.

Same with the moral objectivists among us, of course. God or No God.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Am I missing something here? Alec Baldwin was on a film set. Live ammunition is not allowed on a film set. Actors shoot guns on film sets all the time. Film sets employ ammunition experts who take care of ammunition and firearms on said film sets. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the actors. Actors have every right to believe it when they are told that the guns they are handling don't have live ammunition in them. They don't have any choice. Brandon Lee was shot and killed on a film set by another actor yet no one was ever charged, certainly not the actor who rightfully believe that the gun had blanks in it.
A lot of people don't like Alec Baldwin's politics, therefore, according to American Republican intellectual giants, he MUST be guilty of SOMETHING (they don't seem to know 'what' exactly) because a person's politics is the definitive yardstick for measuring a person's guilt or innocence in events that have absolutely nothing to do with politics.
Now, could the gun-toting religious nut-job American Trump-loving Republicans on here (you know who you are) explain to me what exactly Alec Baldwin is 'guilty' of, since it's a given that you will be in the 'guilty Baldwin corner' because he doesn't vote the same way you do (which is guilt, in and of itself).

The only possible guilty party is whoever took live ammunition onto the filmset.

Besides. Y'all love guns so much. What do you think guns do? Shouldn't y'all be applauding him for not using those 'pussy dummy bullets'?

He had a live round in his gunbelt (not placed there by the armorer). He broke procedure by pointing the gun at the person he shot when he should not have. IOW he went against gun use on set protocols and he's been on sets with guns for a long time and had the double role as producer. There had been incidents on set involving live fire on set, which he knew about. IOW it was known on a set he was producer on that live rounds were getting into film guns. He also had tension or dispute with this person. He's not being charged for intentionally doing this, but given all the facts, this would have been a possible charge. We do not know that the armorer failed though she is also charged. But for all we know she did her job. Why the hell did have a live round on his gunbelt? Why did he point the gun at her and pull the trigger?

Personally, I think he was criminally negligent, at least. What the exact charge should be, I don't know. Above my paygrade. I don't care about his politics. My guess is we overlap quite a bit, but I don't know. I can't take the politics of celebrities seriously. I wouldn't let a celebrity fix my leaky kitchen sink pipe, spay my cat, teach comparative religion or, yeah, advise me on politics. What do they know about the real world?

Are you suggesting he had taken his own real bullets onto the set and had them in a 'gunbelt' (is that like a bum bag with bullets in it?)? How do you know this? I can't find anything that says that. Where did you read that live ammunition had been found on the set prior to the incident? I can't find anything that says that either. The only gun concerns I could find were complaints that prop guns were going off accidentally--something that happened to Baldwin's stunt double. Prop gun quality is a different matter from live ammunition.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I've read that there WAS a hired gun safety expert, but that person was hired through nepotism and was not really qualified or experienced in their role. So that person had a bit of a negligent role in all of it.

And then another person on set had the idea to start preparing for a scene involving the gun without waiting for or getting the gun safety expert to set. So that person had a negligent role in it.

Basically, multiple layers of negligence and bad hiring procedure resulted in this terrible accident.

And that's precisely how diffusion of responsibility plays out. Everybody thinks the other guy did it right.

That's why every person handling the firearms needs to perform the safety checks for themselves.

Or use fake guns on set so you don't have to deal with the headache of safety protocols.

It's not an actor's job to be a gun expert, any more than a child would be responsible if their parents gave them a real gun for xmas and told them it was a toy-- after which he shot the neighbour. Are you saying the child should be charged? How would that child be expected to 'safety check' the gun beforehand?
How does one go about 'safety checking' a gun to make sure it doesn't have live ammunition? If someone gave me a gun and told me to 'safety check' it for live ammuntion I wouldn't have a clue how to go about that.

[Skepdick]

It's not an actor's job to be a gun expert

No expertise is required here. The five rules are the minimum standard of safety for ANY gun owner/gun operator.

My 5 year old nephew has been indoctrinated in those rules.

any more than a child would be responsible if their parents gave them a real gun for xmas and told them it was a toy-- after which he shot the neighbour. Are you saying the child should be charged? How would that child be expected to 'safety check' the gun beforehand?

Alec Baldwin is not a child. He is also the producer on the set. So he kinda gave himself the real gun.

If you don't know how to operate a gun - don't touch it.

How does one go about 'safety checking' a gun to make sure it doesn't have live ammunition? If someone gave me a gun and told me to 'safety check' it for live ammuntion I wouldn't have a clue how to go about that.

Then put the gun down! You are not competent enough to operate this equipment.

Call an adult.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

The usual idiocy from a resident idiot. These are actors we are talking about, so you have to treat them as 'children' when it comes to expertise on guns--which is why they have firearm and ammunition experts on film sets. The only valid point you have is that he was a producer, which would mean that all the other producers should be charged as well if you take it to its logical conclusion.

''An investigation is under way and we don't exactly know yet what went wrong. A spokesman for Mr Baldwin said there had been an accident on the set involving the misfire of a prop gun.

Court submissions later showed an assistant director, Dave Halls, had handed the gun to Mr Baldwin. It contained a live round but Mr Halls said he did not know that, and indicated it was unloaded by shouting "cold gun!" ''

Does 'cold gun' mean there is nothing in the gun, or does it mean that there are blanks in it?
If actors are expected to check if a gun that has been handed to them on a film set is 'live' or not AFTER someone has shouted 'cold gun' at them and the rest of the film crew, then what is the point in this procedure at all? I imagine the person whose job it is to shout 'cold gun' would be a bit miffed to see an actor painstakingly checking the gun to see if it really is 'cold' (whatever that would entail). It would be like calling them a liar or a potential murderer...