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Latest on Alec Baldwin shooting
The armorer is suing (legal merits of that debatable) with some startling allegations. (1) The ammo supplier supplied the set with a mix of live and dummy rounds, and (2) the scene proceeded without her even being on the set ("had Hannah been called back in"). Also in badly-worded article, it seems to say that the ammo supplier Kenney said that "all rounds are rattle tested before being sent to film sets." Rattle tested? I've heard of dummy rounds with a BB inside that would rattle when shaken, but personally, when I make a dummy, I drill holes in the side so I can be sure it holds no powder.
As we know, the rules of gun safety are so devised that you can break one or a few and still no one gets hurt (although they may get scared), to hurt someone a person has to break them all. Looks like these morons broke them all, plus a few just meant for movie-making, and two bystanders paid the price.
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Holes or rattle make no difference in a revolver where the case is "hidden". The problem was that the set armorer didn't have control of the ammo or the firearms and the armorer, apparently, wasn't even present when the shooting happened. "Live" take or not, the firearms were "out" to the actors without the armorer being present to verify that the firearms were "cold". Baldwin, an on-set producer, had been warned about lax firearms safety on that set. Yet he took the profoundly dangerous action of "thumbing" the hammer of the single action revolver and aiming at the woman who had previously "grieved" him about safety concerns. Oops!
There were at least two people authorized to handle firearms, the "armorer" and the assistant director. I've read that on some sets there are three or more, with assistant armorers and other directors as well.
It has also been said the gun was used for "plinking", so some of the crew could experience "shooting a real gun". This is insanity, when in theory a set is supposed to be sanitized just as a firearms instructor would sanitize a force-on-force training area for live rounds and any live-ammo-capable guns.
Currently, it appears the Santa Fe DA is investigating the question of where the live rounds came from, how they got on the set, and who loaded them into the gun.
There is plenty of blame to go around.
In most cases where negligence results in a fatality, there was a chain of errors by multiple people.
But Baldwin pulled the trigger, so he had the ultimate responsibility.
If she was the armorer, why were the weapons out of her control in the first place?