Manslaughter charges against Alec Baldwin dropped.

  • AernaLingus [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    It's insane to me that it's apparently the norm in Hollywood to have ACTUAL GUNS on set and the safety system is to have a single point of failure (the armorer) who makes sure everything is safe. If you're going to have actual guns on set (which already seems like a terrible idea) everyone who touches that gun should be required to get gun safety training.

    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      :10000-com: :10000-com:

      The right wing gun dorks really froth about this one, and it's honestly the right reaction. Alec Baldwin is a big liberal anti-gunner, and yet here he was making a movie with gunplay and treating live guns like toys. The very thing liberal anti-gunners believe all gun people do. To anyone who owns or has shot guns, it should seem bugfuck crazy to trust someone else handing you a gun telling you it's safe to point it at a living being and pull the trigger. You check it. Every time a gun gets into your hands, you check it for safety.

      • booty [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        To anyone who owns or has shot guns, it should seem bugfuck crazy to trust someone else handing you a gun telling you it’s safe to point it at a living being and pull the trigger. You check it.

        To anyone who owns or has shot guns, it's crazy to do that even if you did check it. It violates more than one of the main rules. You treat it as if it's loaded even if you think it isn't. You never point it at anything you don't want to destroy. If someone tells you to point it at them or someone else you say no.

        There's no reason you couldn't use a fake gun for this lol

      • 4zi [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s not the job of the actor to be a firearms expert. They go through safety training, but the point of the armorer is that they do trust that the gun is safe. With Alec Baldwin, the gun was supposed to be loaded with a dummy round but was loaded with a live round. Some dummy rounds look almost exactly the same as a live round. Even if he did check it the chances are he probably wouldn’t have noticed.

        • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s not the job of the actor to be a firearms expert.

          Yeah, this is kind of what I mean. They don't need to be an expert but they sure do need to know the rules of gun safety and be well enough trained to check that the gun is actually safely loaded.

          Guns are serious, there's no space for people to handle them unseriously.

        • Kuori [she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          actors do research for roles all the time. it is absolutely their job to know how to handle a firearm if that's part of a character they're playing. beyond that, anyone who refuses to learn gun safety should be banned from touching a firearm, ever.

          • 4zi [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Did you not read what I wrote, they do safety training.

            And no, it is absolutely not their job to be firearms experts. That’s the SAG and IATSE position on it as well.

            • Kuori [she/her]
              ·
              1 year ago

              i did, i just also read what someone else wrote, which is that he skipped it apparently?

              that's nice that IATSE and SAG feel that way. i disagree with their position and stand by what i said :shrug-outta-hecks:

        • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          It’s not the job of the actor to be a firearms expert.

          It is, however, the job of the production company to hire a competent armourer. And if they knowingly hire a cut-rate armourer with a proven history of dangerous safety violations, the production company's owner ought to be held responsible. Alec Baldwin is the owner of the film's production company.

        • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          It's the number one basic rule of gun safety: don't point a gun at something you don't want to shoot. It's not hard. If you need to break the most cardinal law of gun safety for a film production, you better know what the fuck you are doing.

    • Walk_On [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      That’s what happens when you have a non-union armorer.

      • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
        ·
        1 year ago

        They also decided to literally not pay the armorer for armorer services for the entire filming, they paid her for like 2-3 weeks then said "Ok now you are a prop assistant" or something, and told her to stop doing armorer shit afterwards when she tried cause it would make them have to pay extra.

    • rubpoll [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I just don't understand why there'd ever be actual ammunition anywhere near the guns.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Because eventually they want to film scenes with live rounds being used.

    • FlakesBongler [they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      It depends on the production, but ever since Brandon Lee got killed on the set of The Crow, there's been a definite move away from the "real guns on set" style

      Now there's supposed to be very strict rules on when and where you can use real guns vs. prop guns and everything is supposed to be clearly marked and handled properly

      From what I read about the situation, the producers literally did not give a shit

      The armorer not being union was literally the least of the worst things they did, because there's talk of the weapons cage being open for anyone to just walk into, producers fucking around with the guns themselves and having themselves impromptu shooting sessions, everything just being unmarked and tossed around in buckets with no labels

      It's honestly appalling on so many levels

    • 4zi [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Everyone who touches a gun on a set does go through gun safety training, along with a general safety meeting with everyone by the armorer.