Update: Alec Baldwin case dismissed

It was explained quite succinctly in the post immediately above yours.

None. If Baldwin were just the actor, he shouldn’t be charged - just as the hypothetical attorney shouldn’t be charged for an accidental discharge.

I speculated earlier in the thread he is probably being charged because of his role as producer. He wasn’t just the talent. He was the producer and his company hired the armorer. I guess we’ll find out soon enough what the evidence is. As I said, if he was personally aware of some of the (apparently well known) issues with safety on this set or he received direct complaints I think that’s potentially more problematic. Absent that, it might be the prosecution that is problematic. Depends on what they found.

 

Have you ever been to a gun store?

Because there is definitely not an expectation that the guns in the counter are loaded. There is just as much of an expectation as there should be on a movie set that they are not loaded - the only way the counter is handing you a loaded gun to look at is if someone has monumentally screwed up.

But those types of monumental screw ups do happen - there are just a lot fewer idiot actors being handed guns every day than there are random idiots in gun stores, so movie sets have fewer opportunities for that monumental screw up to occur.

Bubba is, hopefully, (and, frankly, probably) a bit less of an idiot than Alec Baldwin, because no one is going to extend him the courtesy of saying “well, it was reasonable for Bubba to violate literally every single rule of gun safety, the owner was supposed to be the expert, not him, he was only trying to make-believe shoot someone.”

I’m quite confident Baldwin wasn’t supposed to be pointing a gun at people and pulling the trigger between scenes. Baldwin is apparently quite confident he wasn’t supposed to be either - that’s why he is (unconvincingly as I detailed above) trying to claim that he didn’t. That’s the negligent act here.

 

I find it interesting that the folks claiming an actor is criminally culpable for not triple-checking the work of professionals in a controlled setting tend to be the same folks who regularly argue for acquittals in police shootings . . . including many instances where the cops did little/nothing to verify that the person they shot posed any kind of real threat, and where numerous non-lethal alternatives were available.

It's really kind of a strange dichotomy. By their arguments, accidental shootings are basically impossible to justify, while intentional shootings need at most a passing excuse. Seems pretty backward to me.

 

It’s a lot harder to second-guess snap judgments under potential life or death pressure than it is to second guess the decision of “is pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger while I’m sitting here killing time a good idea.”

One’s a pretty obvious “yeah, any idiot would know I shouldn’t do that,” the other can be a lot more complicated.

 

The likelihood of accidentally shooting someone in the context of a film production is vanishingly small compared to the risk of wrongfully killing an innocent person in an intentional shooting.

Particularly given almost every LEO shooting of an innocent person is preceded by numerous failures in police work. The correction of which would save, without exaggeration, thousands of times more lives than anything you’ve suggested for the film industry.

 

And yet, it’s a lot easier to follow “treat every gun as if it is loaded, don’t put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to fire, and don’t point a gun at anything you aren’t willing to destroy” than it is to change how people react to or perceive extreme stress that may threaten their life.

The reason it’s gun people you see saying he should be prosecuted?

It’s because they’ve had the rules on gun safety drilled into their heads and understand just how insane it is (and how preventable this accident was) to think “someone who knows what they’re doing said this gun isn’t loaded” is a sufficient precaution to take before playing with a gun.

 

Well done, you picked the incident where I said the guy should be charged with murder.

He unequivocally was not rehearsing. His own statement is that he was “practicing cross-drawing.”

 

You noticed this too, right? LOL. Baldwin deserves to held accountable for his part of this tragedy...but methinks some of the folks who want him beheaded at the guillotine harbor some saltiness from his Saturday Night Live antics from a few years ago

 

The SNL sketches were funny.

If you wanted to hold anything against him it would be the irony that a preachy anti-gun jackass has managed to shoot more people then nearly every legal gun owner ever will.

But I’d think it was criminal negligence no matter who he was. The fact that he’s Alec Baldwin, proponent of stricter gun laws, is only good for a brief chuckle if he gets convicted of the version of the charge carrying a 5 year mandatory-minimum enhancement for a crime involving a firearm.

 

Interesting that Baldwin talks about on other sets the ‘ professional armorer ‘ would make sure everything was done correct and wouldn’t let actors manipulate weapons on their own etc etc. yet with all the professional experience as producer you had a green bean who followed none of those protocols that he described as the norm on multiple other sets and didn’t think enough about it to say, ‘hey guys, I’ve been on a lot of sets that were more professional than this and maybe we don’t need to be jerking around with weapons ‘. But nope.

Anyone on this website hires a staff to come to their house and help them train for the next John wick movie tryouts and a firearm in your hand is negligently/ accidentally discharged and someone loses their life. You are going to prison.

 

B.S. Don’t try to defend police shootings, which are indefensible. You can make a legalistic argument, because we have made a societal choice to create an immoral legal system allowing state sanctioned killings without real accountability

 

Will Baldwin do his Donald Trump impression behind bars?

 

Appearing on Hannity? Hard to believe she has integrity after that

 

Just to inject a little humor into the debate.

 

Exactly. There is a large segment of the population that would not have the first clue how to access rounds in a pistol's magazine or a revolver's cylinder to inspect them. Even if they could, the difference between a live round, a blank round and one intended to simulate the appearance of a live round, a dummy round, is not necessarily apparent.

The Screen Actor's Guild has spoken out and indicated what the "industry standard" is.:

"The prosecutor’s contention that an actor has a duty to ensure the functional and mechanical operation of a firearm on a production set is wrong and uninformed. An actor’s job is not to be a firearms or weapons expert. Firearms are provided for their use under the guidance of multiple expert professionals directly responsible for the safe and accurate operation of that firearm. In addition, the employer is always responsible for providing a safe work environment at all times, including hiring and supervising the work of professionals trained in weapons."

Alec Baldwin ‘Rust’ Criminal Charges: SAG-AFTRA Defends Actor – Deadline

The case against Baldwin will likely not survive both a motion to dismiss and a motion for judgement of acquittal.

 

Why? They don't make some idiot that walks into a gun shop off the street and purchase a firearm go through any training..at all. And that idiot certainly doesn't have a professional armorer at home to ensure the weapon is safe.

Uhmm, how many action, western, war or crime movies have you seen where the actors just fire warning shots in the air the entire movie? Saving Private Ryan would have never ended, it would now be almost 25 years long and going.