Judge dismisses charges against Alec Baldwin

[pubic_assistance]

12 minutes ago, augustus said:

That's what people around here call Justice. 

Because it is.

The weapons master is responsible for what's inside a prop gun, not the producer.

[+ augustus]

9 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

Because it is.

The weapons master is responsible for what's inside a prop gun, not the producer.

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was NOT a weapons master.   The well-qualified, trained, and experienced armorer and his crew resigned and walked off the set two days before this happened due to unsafe conditions that were Baldwin's responsibility. Guns were going off and in addition to the armorer quitting, 6 cameramen and their assistants walked off the job because of gun discharges.  That was entered as evidence and text messages from these employees stated they were afraid of getting killed. Gutierrez-Reed was then put in the role even though she had no qualifications for the job. Baldwin was the executive producer and that makes him responsible for what happened on set.  

[+ augustus]

By law, the one with a real gun in their hands are responsible for it's safe use regardless if it's for pretending or not. Baldwin by law was supposed to ensure the gun is safe because he had the gun in his hands. Would you just think it would be ok to trust someone who gave you a gun and said it's safe to point it at your loved ones and pull the trigger?????

[pubic_assistance]

2 minutes ago, augustus said:

Baldwin was the executive producer and that makes him responsible for what happened on set.  

Yes and no.

I am an architect and I do full production of my projects. If I hire a plumber who fucks up and floods a house then HE is responsible for the subsequent lawsuit, not me. Just becasue I am the producer of the project it doesnt mean I am individually responsible for damages. I may be implicated because of my role, but I can't be held liable when someone else was the person hired to do the job.

Baldwin may have hired the wrong person but he did have someone in that role. So the responsibility is theirs to check for live ammunition, not his.

[+ augustus]

14 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

If I hire a plumber who fucks up and floods a house then HE is responsible for the subsequent lawsuit, not me.

Terrible analogy.  We are not talking about a burst pipe here.  Baldwin was fully aware that there was live ammunition on the site and that the staff managing the guns was ineffective and inefficient, Baldwin had an absolute responsibility to check the gun before handling it and pointing it at someone.  ESPECIALLY SINCE PEOPLE WERE QUITTING THEIR JOBS ON THE SET because guns were going off left and right and they were afraid of getting killed.  That should have caused Baldwin to act and take measures LIKE HIRING A COMPETENT ARMORER.  Would you keep hiring Moe, Larry and Curly as plumbers for plumbing jobs?

[+ augustus]

Oh, never came out about the sexual assault claims that Halyna was about to file on Baldwin.

[+ augustus]

Tens of thousands of movies made and when do you hear about a gun discharging and killing an innocent person on set??????  Even cheap B movies.  So the law is that it is okay to pull the trigger ON A REAL GUN and take a life as long as you didn’t load the gun yourself.  Got it.

Edited July 13 by augustus

[KeepItReal]

49 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

 

Baldwin may have hired the wrong person but he did have someone in that role. So the responsibility is theirs to check for live ammunition, not his.

 

53 minutes ago, augustus said:

 Baldwin by law was supposed to ensure the gun is safe because he had the gun in his hands. 

I agree, Baldwin should drop his attempts at being a director and stick to what he is good at: Comedy. 😎

 

Edited July 13 by KeepItReal

[pubic_assistance]

47 minutes ago, KeepItReal said:

Baldwin should drop his attempts at being a director and stick to what he is good at: Comedy. 😎

Fair enough. I always liked Baldwin's work. Was great as Jack Dennehey(sp?)in 30 Rock. He also hosts for the classical music station in NYC. Talented performer. Great voice. But some messy life choices unfortunately.

[+ augustus]

Definitely manslaughter/murder on the part of Baldwin.  He didn't have the self discipline to learn the basics of handling a firearm, such as always assume it is loaded until the person holding it proves it isn't loaded.  Never point a gun at anyone or anything you don't intend to kill.   This jerk was walking around the set shooting at cars, birds, bottles, etc that people were afraid they would be killed.

Nonetheless, Baldwin is a celebrity, so he is above all that.  There are people in our peer group that idolize the likes of him and will go along with it is "somebody else's fault".  Just Wow.   

[pubic_assistance]

7 minutes ago, augustus said:

Nonetheless, Baldwin is a celebrity, so he is above all that.  There are people in our peer group that idolize the likes of him and will go along with it is "somebody else's fault".  Just Wow.   

[EZEtoGRU]

52 minutes ago, pubic_assistance said:

Fair enough. I always liked Baldwin's work. Was great as Jack Dennehey(sp?)in 30 Rock. He also hosts for the classical music station in NYC. Talented performer. Great voice. But some messy life choices unfortunately.

He was always excellent on SNL as well.  A well-rounded talented guy.  

[+ augustus]

For hundreds of years, pre-teenagers have been taught that the gun is always loaded, a reference to always assume that the gun is loaded, and number two, you never point a gun at a person, EVER, unless you are shooting to kill someone!  Every state that requires a gun permit also requires a course where the same is taught.  Yet, you got some people here who state there's nothing wrong with an inexperienced armorer handing you a gun and WITHOUT DOING JUST 2 SECONDS OF CHECKING IT, points it at an innocent woman and blows her away.  DUH!!!!! 

[+ augustus]

6 hours ago, pubic_assistance said:

Clearly the fault lies with the person responsible for those wespons, meant to be used as props

A "prop" gun cannot fire real bullets.  A "real" gun can be used as a prop gun and can contain blanks or real bullets.  Takes just 2 seconds to check it.  Baldwin the jerk should have checked it, especially since he was firing real rounds all over the place on that set.  All he knew he was wrong because his defense was that he didn't pull the trigger on that gun.  Total BS!  The FBI said that gun could never have fired without someone pulling the trigger.

Edited July 13 by augustus

[BSR]

2 hours ago, augustus said:

Terrible analogy.  We are not talking about a burst pipe here.  Baldwin was fully aware that there was live ammunition on the site and that the staff managing the guns was ineffective and inefficient, Baldwin had an absolute responsibility to check the gun before handling it and pointing it at someone.  ESPECIALLY SINCE PEOPLE WERE QUITTING THEIR JOBS ON THE SET because guns were going off left and right and they were afraid of getting killed.  That should have caused Baldwin to act and take measures LIKE HIRING A COMPETENT ARMORER.  Would you keep hiring Moe, Larry and Curly as plumbers for plumbing jobs?

If the prosecutor was guilty of misconduct, then the appropriate measures are sanctions and penalties for that prosecution team.  But the defendant shouldn't "benefit" from that misconduct.  I hope another prosecutor refiles the charges.

Yes, primary responsibility for the tragic death falls on the (horrifyingly incompetent) armorer.  But as executive producer, Baldwin bears some share of blame as well.  If your crew flat-out ups and quits because set procedures have become so unsafe, your responsibility as executive producer is to shut down filming to straighten everything out.  Failure to do so is gross negligence.

@pubic_assistance, allow me to tweak your analogy a bit.  If you as the architect contract a plumber with an impeccable reputation, top-notch work on every single project going back decades, and the plumbing explodes, are you responsible?  No, of course not.  But if you knowingly hire a shyte plumber whose previous dozen jobs are plagued with problems, are you responsible?  Duh, of course. 

The latter scenario is a far better analogy of Baldwin's mismanagement.  The crew's quitting was a slap in the face, telling if not screaming at him to stop filming.  Yet he chose to ignore that giant red flag,  maybe because of budget concerns, maybe because of a shocking lack of common sense.  Whatever the reason for his (baffling) decision, Baldwin bears a share of responsibility for that poor woman's death.

Edited July 13 by BSR
Clarity

[+ augustus]

7 minutes ago, BSR said:

If the prosecutor was guilty of misconduct, then the appropriate measures are sanctions and penalties for that prosecution team.  But the defendant shouldn't "benefit" from that misconduct.  I hope another prosecutor refiles the charges.

Absolutely true.  Judges don't dismiss indictments over Brady "violations" in nearly all these types of situations.  They will sanction the prosecutor, tell the jury the situation or oder a new trial. 

[+ augustus]

Why were there even real guns with real bullets on that set to begin with?  Hollywood uses prop guns or real guns with blanks and not real bullets.  Or they insert the sound of a gun later when they edit the film.  Alec Baldwin is an irresponsible piece of trash that wanted to play with real guns, like the moron doofus that he is, and real bullets and was shooting up the whole place.  

Edited July 13 by augustus

[pubic_assistance]

8 minutes ago, augustus said:

Alec Baldwin is an irresponsible piece of trash

Did Alec Baldwin reject your advances @augustus ? You DO seem to have an axe to grind.

[Just Chuck]

I have a friend who is a Hollywood stunt woman.  She told me that the Screen Actor's Guild has strict rules on guns on sets:

• The certified armorer is supposed to own the set during any time when guns are present.  
• The set is fenced off and the armorer checks everyone coming in or going out of the set.  
• Only people who've passed a class that lasts a few hours can physically touch even the dummy guns on set.  
• Every gun, blank-round, and live-round is accounted-for constantly.  
• There were a lot more rules, but those are the ones that I can remember.

As I understand, the makers of "Rust" moved production to New Mexico specifically to avoid the SAG rules and union pay scales.  They didn't hire a certified armorer. They hired a young woman in her early twenties whose qualification was that she had run a youth summer camp marksmanship program.

My friend said that it sounded like the whole production of "Rust" was unsafe and she wondered if the production was even insured because a lot of the insurance companies make film-makers comply with SAG rules to qualify to be insured.

 

[BuffaloKyle]

4 hours ago, augustus said:

There have been hundreds of thousands of movie scenes made with guns and no one has gotten killed.

Ummm Brandon Lee?

Brandon Lee - Wikipedia

EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

 

[+ augustus]

11 minutes ago, BuffaloKyle said:

Ummm Brandon Lee?

Yes, a tragedy but not even close to the level of negligence as Baldwin.  Still these incidents are very rare.  

Edited July 13 by augustus

[BSR]

1 minute ago, Just Chuck said:

As I understand, the makers of "Rust" moved production to New Mexico specifically to avoid the SAG rules and union pay scales.  They didn't hire a certified armorer. They hired a young woman in her early twenties whose qualification was that she had run a youth summer camp marksmanship program.

My friend said that it sounded like the whole production of "Rust" was unsafe and she wondered if the production was even insured because a lot of the insurance companies make film-makers comply with SAG rules to qualify to be insured.

Thanks for this eye-popping revelation.  The information you provided confirms my suspicion that Baldwin's horrifyingly bad decisions stemmed from budget concerns.  My blood ran cold when I read that detail about the armorer's "qualifications."  Who knows what will happen with the criminal charges, but my God, Baldwin deserves to get destroyed in civil court.

[Just Chuck]

27 minutes ago, augustus said:

Why were there even real guns with real bullets on that set to begin with?  Hollywood uses prop guns or real guns with blanks and not real bullets.  Or they insert the sound of a gun later when they edit the film.  Alec Baldwin is an irresponsible piece of trash that wanted to play with real guns, like the moron doofus that he is, and real bullets and was shooting up the whole place.  

My friend the stuntwoman told me that they CGI in the muzzle blast on a lot of scenes where the actors actually are holding dummy rubber guns.  
Then, there are guns that have been fitted with propane adapters that produce muzzle flash but nothing else and the sounds are dubbed in.

They will go to blanks only if the first two options aren't available. 

If they need to show a bullet hitting something, they'll have the armorer fire the gun and just film the target and splice that together with a shot of the actor firing a CGI, propane, or blank-firing gun.

They only bring out live ammo if they really need to show both the actor firing the gun and the impact of the bulllet on a target. 

[+ augustus]

22 minutes ago, Just Chuck said:

As I understand, the makers of "Rust" moved production to New Mexico specifically to avoid the SAG rules and union pay scales.  They didn't hire a certified armorer. They hired a young woman in her early twenties whose qualification was that she had run a youth summer camp marksmanship program.

Indeed.  They were trying to save every penny they could and pocket the money.  They actually tried to use a $1.6 million tax incentive from the State of New Mexico for Rust to finance the settlement for the killed woman!  New Mexico denied it and took the money back.

Edited July 13 by augustus

[EZEtoGRU]

Interesting read from NBC article.  Former prosecutor on the case agrees with dismissal.  When the prosecutor agrees with the dismissal there really isn't much else to say.    Justice was served in this case.  Onto the next.

Prosecutor who resigned from Alec Baldwin 'Rust' case says she wanted dismissal

WWW.YAHOO.COM

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A special prosecutor who resigned from the manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin on Friday said she did so because she felt it should have been voluntarily dismissed by the...