Count Dooku

I'm not certain if you are being serious or not, but quality checks do not check every piece of work being done; it's checking a random sampling of the product.

B5Erik

He is not a gun expert. He SHOULD NEVER do gun safety checks of his own. He isn't qualified to do that!

GoldenJCJ

He’s not but maybe that should be a new requirement: That the armorer does a safety check in front of the actor before handing him/her the gun.

I think I stated it above but I also think actors should go through, at the very minimum, a beginner’s firearms course. It could include not only firearms basics but could also cover Hollywood firearms basics (what a blank looks like, the difference between a working firing pin and a spent bullet shell, how to tell a dummy bullet from a real bullet, etc).

That would also solve the problem of a movie pet peeve of mine where supposedly well trained characters don’t even have simple finger discipline on the gun.

Count Dooku

So Spielberg is filming the Allied troops landing at Normandy with dozens of actors running around in the shots carrying and "firing" weapons, and each one of them was going to take a basic firearms class, and each one of them was going to do an individual weapons check with the armorer?

And if there's a break in the shooting, and the actors put their weapons down, do they all have to have an individual weapons check again when Spielberg is ready to resume?

I know this is a serious subject, and it's terrible that this woman died, but . . . y'know . . . bear patrol.

GoldenJCJ

I think rules can be created around those scenarios. How many of those actors/extras were actually firing blanks and how many were running around with rubber guns?

I would propose a rule that there should be X number of armorers per X number of guns on set.

And yeah, if you’re an actor who handles an actual gun on set, you go through training. I’m not suggesting a one-on-one firearms course like we saw Keanu go through for John Wick but it’s not unreasonable to fill a classroom or two with actors before production begins. If Spielberg can put his actors through “Basic Training” he can have actors sit for an afternoon to learn how to not kill each other during filming.

And let’s face it, if your character is an elite Navy SEAL or the worlds most dangerous assassin, you should probably know how to hold a gun without looking like an actor who has never even touched one.

It’s also not an unreasonable rule to not leave your weapon unattended or set it down somewhere. If they take a break, they totally need to go through weapons checks again.

I honestly don’t know what many of the rules for weapons on set there are currently in place but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of those rules were already in place.

andicus

Probably not, but I'm only stating what I would do. I simply wouldn't feel comfortable, without checking, or at a minimum, being shown.

GoldenJCJ

And there’s a difference between being “proficient with handling firearms” and keeping your fucking finger off the trigger.

Count Dooku

If you are holding an unloaded gun, what's the problem with pulling the trigger?

GoldenJCJ

Good question. Let’s ask Alec and Halyna.

Count Dooku

So you are proposing creating a bunch of new rules AND creating a bunch of exceptions and get-arounds to those rules? Do you work for the IRS?

Again, bear patrol. Excessive regulation and wasting money.

Since nobody got shot on the set of Saving Private Ryan or John Wick or Desperado or Tombstone or Hard Boiled or . . . you get the point, not giving your actors guns with ammunition seems to be a pretty fucking effective deterrent to people shooting each other on set.

Cuz nobody on a movie set is ever concerned about wasting time.

Count Dooku

He shot her with an empty gun!?!?!?

GoldenJCJ

I used a poor choice of words. I didn’t mean create rules to get around the safety procedures, I meant create rules to cover those instances of a lot of guns on set.

Meh, Hollywood can afford it. I’m not crying for the plight of movie producers.

Agreed. Most sets seems to be pretty safe. A few extra precautions wouldn’t hurt though.

I guess that depends on what your definition of “wasting time” is.


I’m just a dude on the internet Monday Morning Quarterbacking the situation. Either nothing is done and we go another 20 or 25 years before someone else gets shot on set or Hollywood adjusts some of their rules around gun safety. Either way, it’s doesn’t affect me.

Count Dooku

My definition of wasting time is enacting measures to limit the possibility of something occurring when right now it is happening once every 20-25 years.

GoldenJCJ

Apparently it was. According to everyone on set it was empty…right up until she was shot.

GoldenJCJ

That’s a fair point. Meanwhile I’m still taking my shoes off at the airport because of one dipshit 20 years ago.

Runaway

In 2015 a flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf crashed into the French Alpes, because the suicidal co-pilot wanted to kill himself and took 149 people with him. After 9/11 the cockpit door could not be opened from the outside, which seems reasonable, but the pilot could not re-enter. So should there be a new regulation for suicidal pilots? It could be mandatory to have two people in the cockpit at all times, so when one of the pilots leaves the cockpit, a flight attendant has to enter. But if one person inside the cockpit overpowers the other? Should there be a third person...

Checking a gun is not the same as taking of shoes. If an expert tells me, it's safe to handle the gun, I have to trust him, otherwise his job is pointless. In this case Alec Baldwin wasn't handed the gun by an expert, that's something that shouldn't happen.

mwynn

It is all checks and balances, safety should be the primary concern. No one should die while making a movie. Over the years it has happened way to much, as well as people being maimed.

GoldenJCJ

I was being facetious with my shoe bomber comment. My point is that sometimes even well regulated situations have had a tweak here and there to ensure things don’t go wrong again.

Maybe my suggestions go too far since these on set shooting incidents don’t happen very often. Obviously though, something went very wrong on the set of Rust and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that some changes be made to prevent this from happening again.

Like I said previously, I don’t know all the current rules for firearms safety on movie sets. Maybe a lot of the rules I suggested are already in place and the crew on Rust just ignored them. In which case, going back to why this thread was bumped, it probably warrants some civil litigation.

mwynn

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainmen...sets-1.6221637
https://ew.com/movies/rust-latest-lo...hs-movie-sets/

Count Dooku

I don't understand that answer. If the gun was empty, what object was propelled into her body?

d2cheer

Oh please school me on something I have done for 30 years. In my industry (Medical Device) everything is checked peoples lives depend on it. One bad device and someone can and will die. There is zero room for error on anything. But keep talking out of your ass.

Count Dooku

I worked one summer on a printing press, printing runs of tens and hundreds of thousands of magazines. Every so often, one of the senior guys would grab a finished magazine off the line, take it to a table and look it over with a magnifying glass. That was a quality check. He didn't examine every magazine.

If I buy a jar of peanut butter, I'm assuming somebody has checked the quality of the product at some point, but I'm also confident nobody stuck their finger in the jar I purchased.

So, checking quality means something different in your industry, but what a quality check is where you work does not mean that is the definition of a quality check.

Alec Baldwin has been acting for 40 years, made a hundred movies, and brandished a gun dozens and dozens of times. There has never been an incident before. Why would he think he needed to do a "quality check" on the gun this time?

d2cheer

And yet if done here like it should have been someone would not be dead.

GoldenJCJ

One of the five rules of gun safety is:
- Treat all firearms as if they were loaded.


You never assume a gun is empty. My answer was referring to the fact that everyone THOUGHT the gun was empty. If someone would have asked Baldwin if the gun was empty just prior to him shooting Hutchins he would have said, yes it was. So to him (and apparently everyone on set) the gun WAS empty. Until he pulled the trigger (or thumbed the hammer) and realized it wasn’t.

Count Dooku

If you start a thread to proclaim the pointless idiocy of a lot of govt bureaucracy, I'll be there to agree with you.