if i handed you a gun and you did not check its safety/load status then i would consider you liable. my kids learned that at 6 years old.
then A baldwin took that gun that had an unknown status, pointed it directly at a person 4 feet away!! blanks or not, could you imagine if i had done that to you, your kid or somebody you know??
then of course he fired said gun at a person that did not appear to be acting or in a scene of any kind.
anyway, i hope the actual truth comes out and that justice is served. i hear such filters stuff from the news media, this video included that i am a bit uncertain as to the actual events.
regardless, i believe that baldwin certainly pointed a weapon of unknown status at a person and pulled the trigger. (he could have pulled the trigger, then pulled hammer back) but either way he could have prevented it as well, especially with a revolver!
I don't think the legal system would ascribe the same duties and obligations to an actor with a "pretend gun" on a "closed set".
I get what you are saying. You and I understand guns are not toys and there is a requirement for specific training for firearms. Hollywood isn't reality. How we handle Hazmat napalm in the real world isn't the same as how a stunt actor handles fake napalm in a fake hazmat truck on the silver screen.
So if we concur that Hollywood is fake and that gun care isn't the same on the silverscreen as it is in the real world, lets break down the culpability. The armorer is the person that protects, loads, checks, and secures the prop guns. The armorer may have been the one who's duty was to select prop guns rather than to use a real gun for a movie (unclear on how frequently real guns are used in movies). The armorer had the duty to secure the gun but instead allowed it to be shot either by herself or her friends with real bullets for target practice on the site of a movie.
So back to culpability, the child (actor - baldwin) was handed a prop. The armorer's job was to secure that item and maintain custody of it at all times. She is the grossly negligent employee. The other persons to blame would be the showrunners, producers, production company, etc. which in this case points back to corporations of which by coincidence, the actor Baldwin has financial interests.
I don't like Alec Baldwin. I never did, although he is a decent actor in his early career. He clearly is anti-gun and he clearly had no firearms training to boot. But the events set in motion that created this occurrence are really the armorer. It is gleeful desire from the right to screw over known anti-gun leftist Baldwin and its a desire from the left to hold 20-nothing year old armorer consequence-free because she's a young woman.
I don't buy that. She had a professional duty based upon her role to select, secure, and control the props at all times. She failed in that duty. I doubt that the actor had a duty to know TAB-K or to understand that props can be deadly and indeed the gun he held wasn't even a prop.
I want the armorer in jail criminally and I want Baldwin's production company civilly stone-cold broke. If a prosecutor can attach Producer Baldwin's executive recklessness to the death that happened in the hands of Actor Baldwin, more power to the prosecutors. But lets not deflect the blame from everyone involved beyond the actor in the scene because that was the long tail of the larger picture.
Just my opinion. Clearly, not held in the majority here. Clearly not the path to the deep money awards by the prosecutors either.
