You may recall that I’ve been wondering how a live round ever made it onto the Rust set.
One thing that always bothered me was presence of live rounds on site at all. Where did they come from? Who brought them? How did at least one end up in the gun?
We may have a better idea of who that was, now. Armorer Gutierrez-Reed had tried suggesting the company that supplied blanks had mixed the live rounds in with the right stuff. The forensic examination of components strongly suggested otherwise. Then there was the report that she had retrieved the gun after the shooting, before the police arrived, and removed the spent case. That’s odd,and sounds rather like tampering with evidence.
I just ran across this tidbit, which — if true — may explain a lot.
The New York Post reports that police gathered text messages from Reed that indicated she had attempted to use live ammunition on the set of her previous film.
Did she bring them again, for the Rust filming? And was she trying to conceal evidence of what she’d done? I suppose we’ll see when her trial starts.
This may be part of the new forensic evidence that the prosecutors cited when dropping charges against Baldwin for now. I still think the actor completely failed to exercise “due caution and circumspection,” but if Gutierrez-Reed herself knowingly brought the live rounds onto the set, and loaded one into the gun, a lot more of the culpability for the resulting death and injury shifts her way. Not all, but some.
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Early on after the shooting I saw an article that said they had been target shooting off set with That pistol.
Saw that, too. But it dropped out of the narrative pretty quickly.
This was Baldwin’s picture. He was in control of the whole thing. He hired an inexperienced armorer, daughter of a famous one–but apparently it’s not genetic. Baldwin allowed massive use of live ammo in property guns by hands, extras, etc. for plinking just off set. Everyone knew this, and you couldn’t not hear it on set. Baldwin called for a set gun for a short film shoot. The armorer didn’t have the gun because someone was plinking with it. It was located and rushed to Baldwin improperly checked. There was still one round in the cylinder. In my opinion, the responsibility is entirely Baldwins’s. But because he is an asshole he is trying to blame others. He was the boss. He allowed plinking with live ammo. He hired an incompetent armorer to save money. It’s all on him.
Are you speculating, or did you hear this version somewhere? The bit about the gun being somewhere else and quickly brought back to Baldwin doesn’t match statements given to the cops (in their reports).
IIRC the police report didn’t mention the crew plinking with the prop guns.
The only things that I “know” are things that have been written someplace by people who are trying to prove just how much smarter they are than everyone else. I tend to not put too much faith in that sort of things.
I think that Alec Baldwin was at fault for not checking the gun for safety before pointing it at anyone, let alone pulling the trigger. That should have been one of the parts of the pre filming safety briefings that happen with any film having guns on the set.