Alec Baldwin fatally shoots woman with prop gun on movie set

Soldato
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After reading the article today, could he have pulled the hammer back to c*** the gun but not pulled it back all the way, then when he release it the hammer sprung back? If he didn't lock the hammer into place he wouldn't have needed to pull the trigger.

Still doesn't explain the live round though.

The pistol was an Italian made Colt SAA clone with what’s called a 4 click hammer. Unless the trigger sears are damaged or have been removed there’s no way that the hammer can fall past the next sear notch UNLESS the trigger is pulled.
 
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Interesting video on the function of this type of firearm. Very unlikely he didn’t operate the trigger.



The first comment on this video about the “unloaded gun being the most dangerous” is quite apt.

I’m not saying Baldwin is at fault. But at a series of events and failures took place that included a ND while pointing at someone.
 
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dont prop guns have no bullets and just something that makes some sparks/smoke and a bang noise? how can it hurt someone?

It's been said a lot of times but prop is the modern word for theatrical property. It has no claim of being a fake or intrinsically safe.

This was a real gun that was the prop[erty] of the production. It was intended to display fake rounds and fire blanks.

A blank can kill you at extreme close range by blasting hot gas through your skin and flesh.

In this instance a forbidden real round with a real bullet was put into the gun and Baldwin pulled the trigger while rehearsing and pointing it at the camera.
 
Soldato
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dont prop guns have no bullets and just something that makes some sparks/smoke and a bang noise? how can it hurt someone?

Anything that looks like a weapon should always be assumed to be live.

Blanks can be very dangerous at close range. Some weapons, like muskets, use wadding to tamp down the gunpowder which can be a fairly dangerous projectile in itself.

Talk to historical re-enactors for a voyage into how many things can go wrong...
 
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dont prop guns have no bullets and just something that makes some sparks/smoke and a bang noise? how can it hurt someone?

Some do, but those are toys and not at all realistic. They're no use for a film. They might be used for a stage play, where realism is less important. They might be used when a "gun" is just required to be visible, just a piece of scenery.

But most prop guns (and all prop guns that are to be used in a scene) are real guns. "prop" just means it's owned (or rented) by the company making the film/TV program/play/game/whatever. It's their property.

blanks do a lot more than "makes some sparks/smoke and a bang noise". Blanks are actual rounds without a bullet on the end. They do everything a real round does except for throwing out a bullet. They explode. They generate a very large amount of hot gas under very high pressure. They'll also throw out some form of wadding which is needed to stop the load in the round falling out of the hole where there bullet should be. "a bang noise" doesn't cut it for a realistic gunshot noise. Unless you're firing low power subsonic rounds and using a suppressor, the sound of a bullet being fired is immense. It's a physical thing, harsh and brutal. "sparks" doesn't cut it either - if there should be muzzle flash, it will be fire, not sparks. An average handgun blank can be lethal up to about 2 metres. So while it's true that blanks "have no bullets", they are live rounds and absolutely capable of hurting someone. Fatally.

But that's not relevant in this case because the gun shouldn't have had blanks in it and didn't have blanks in it. The gun should have had dummies in it. Dummies do have bullets, but they don't have a load or a primer so they're completely inert and thus no more dangerous than any hard object. A pencil would be a more dangerous weapon than a dummy round because it has a sharper end.

What happened in this case was that one (or possibly more) of the chambers in the revolver was loaded with a real round. There shouldn't have been a real round on set at all. A gun that was being used for filming should never have been loaded with a real round (that shouldn't have been on set anyway). The existence of the real round (that shouldn't have been loaded into the gun and shouldn't have been anywhere near the gun anyway) should have been detected when the gun was checked before it was handed to the actor. In most cases, the actor would have checked the gun too, although that's not usually absolutely required. It is absolutely required that the gun is checked, though. Every time. By a person on set specifically tasked with doing so. Usually the armourer, since their whole job is to handle arms and ensure that everyone knows exactly what is going on. But this production only had a part time armourer and it wasn't them who handed the gun to Baldwin. There's a whole slew of grevious failures of suitable safety precautions in this case.
 
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The pistol was an Italian made Colt SAA clone with what’s called a 4 click hammer. Unless the trigger sears are damaged or have been removed there’s no way that the hammer can fall past the next sear notch UNLESS the trigger is pulled.

Some people have made a good point that we don't at this time know what modification may or may not have been done to the gun for movie production use. Which may or may not be a factor in how possible it was for it to go off without the trigger being pulled.
 
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At best it's negligence, he should have checked the weapon before pointing it at someone. Also his claim that he didn't pull the trigger is insane, guns don't fire themselves.
 
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The armourer is now suing the supplier of the bullets, claiming they must sent live rounds mixed in with dummy rounds

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59978682
Does sound rather unlikely to me, particularly given the other stories that have come out. Also, shaking a whole box as the armourer claims rather than each round individually doesn't sound like good practice.

Hopefully there's enough evidence to show whether the supplier is likely to have messed up (eg tracing the origins of the live and dummy bullets - if they're from identical stock makes the supplier look more suspicious, or seeing if any other dummy round they've supplied to other sets have had any live rounds mixed in) or not.

Would explain a lot if the supplier was at fault I suppose, even if it doesn't exactly paint the armourer or the rest of the production in a good light.
 
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The armourer is now suing the supplier of the bullets, claiming they must sent live rounds mixed in with dummy rounds

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-59978682

I suspect this case is nothing more than deflection, as imagine the armourer is likely the person who will get the harshest punishment out of the three of them.

It definitely seems an odd case to try and prosecute, going by the above picture it wouldn't take a professional to recognise there is a difference between live ammunition and blank rounds. So for someone who is supposed to be a professional in firearms, would be able to spot the difference from a mile away.

Something really stinks.
 
Soldato
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I suspect this case is nothing more than deflection, as imagine the armourer is likely the person who will get the harshest punishment out of the three of them.

It definitely seems an odd case to try and prosecute, going by the above picture it wouldn't take a professional to recognise there is a difference between live ammunition and blank rounds. So for someone who is supposed to be a professional in firearms, would be able to spot the difference from a mile away.

Something really stinks.

Is any actual forensic/ballistic information public knowledge yet or is everyone still just speculating? Presumably at some point it will become established exactly what ammo was supplied, who touched it, what was loaded in the gun, fired etc?
 
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Is any actual forensic/ballistic information public knowledge yet or is everyone still just speculating? Presumably at some point it will become established exactly what ammo was supplied, who touched it, what was loaded in the gun, fired etc?

Still obviously speculation. Last thing i'd read was the police were trying to get a hold of Baldwin's phone but he was being a bit difficult.
 
Man of Honour
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Would explain a lot if the supplier was at fault I suppose, even if it doesn't exactly paint the armourer or the rest of the production in a good light.

Sadly these days health and safety and best practises people put little value in until something goes wrong - I really don't and can't comprehend the mentality myself.

For instance I've worked at places with fire shutters, clearly marked, which are critical to giving people time to evacuate in those industries if something happens, where people will happily work by them and leave their equipment and boxes, etc. blocking them coming down, even when taken to task about 2 weeks later they'll lapse into the same thing again and the only way they'll take notice is if they are on their last chance before being fired. Even though if an incident happens it doesn't take a genius to understand it has a high chance of being the difference between life and death.
 
Soldato
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Surely, the person who loaded the gun would have noticed the live rounds?

Murder charge if they did.
Negligence charge if they didn't.

They use real brass and bullet for theatrical rounds that are inert because the whole point is to look real and if they're not specially identified they will look exactly like a live round with power and primer behind the bullet.
 
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