7 ms·

On Alec Baldwin’s Shooting

10 points by mhb 4y ago

JoeyBananas 4y ago
This is the most juicy court case in all of recorded history
istjohn 4y ago
What baffles me is why they don't create guns that are incapable of firing live rounds. It should be mechanically impossible to fire a live round. The blanks should be keyed or shaped in such a way that guns capable of loading and/or firing them cannot load live rounds unless someone deliberately counterfeits a blank.
- andrewfromx 4y ago
  I think the argument against that is art and style of guns. You want one specific look for your scene and the cost to make a replica like you explain above is > just finding the real gun.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    Why not find a real gun that looks right for the part, and then run a blob of weld down the inside of the barrel? Why would you even have live rounds on set?
    - mhb 4y ago
      Unsurprisingly, TFA, its comments, and associated links address these issues.
    - marcus0x62 4y ago
      > Why not find a real gun that looks right for the part, and then run a blob of weld down the inside of the barrel? If you did this, and then fired a live round in the gun, it could injure or kill the person holding the gun or someone nearby. > Why would you even have live rounds on set? I cannot imagine there's any acceptable reason to have live rounds on set, and it seems like whoever put live rounds on this movie set should have some explaining to do, at the very least.
      - Gordonjcp 4y ago
        > If you did this, and then fired a live round in the gun, it could injure or kill the person holding the gun or someone nearby. All the more reason to be careful how you load it, then.
        slingnow 4y ago
        So, the same scenario we're currently in. Jamming a gun barrel so the bullet can't leave the chamber isn't a method of making a gun safe.
        Gordonjcp 4y ago
        But if it was *your* hand that was getting blown off if the gun was incorrectly loaded, you'd make pretty damn sure it was right every time you picked it up.
    - justahuman74 4y ago
      > Why would you even have live rounds on set? I'm going to guess "because america"
- roywiggins 4y ago
  They do, they're called blank guns or signal guns.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    We use those on theatrical stages, where the muzzle flash is less important than safety. It would still be very dangerous to put a live round in one, and unfortunately they do tend to be sized to take regular ammunition (loaded with gunpowder but no projectile). But at least if somebody did put a live round in it, it would not be a death sentence for whoever it was pointed at. As on a movie set, the prop is only ever touched by the armorer and the actor who uses it (who is not supposed to open it unless it's called for in the script).
- avisser 4y ago
  It's a catch-22 in the US. You can't have a non-lethal gun that looks like a lethal one because the cops will shoot you. Once it looks different, they don't want it in a movie.
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    Just green screen out the orange tip.
  - onepointsixC 4y ago
    It really isn't. There are competent gun smiths who modify guns to ensure that only blanks can be fired. Real bullets could not be chambered.
    - avisser 4y ago
      Sure, but now you've made it a custom product. Small movies will just use real guns + blanks.
      - onepointsixC 4y ago
        There are armorers who already have all of these custom products and have used them on many, many movies. This movie cheaped out on that and had a armorer who was very inexperienced.
- baud147258 4y ago
  Didn't they had one on set of the movie?
h2odragon 4y ago
Doesn't matter how much security software you have, when the root password is written on a note posted on the front door. Similarly it don't matter how many times people have had "firearm safety" explained to them, if they'll insist on pointing a firearm at someone and pulling the trigger. That is the failure that matters here. That is the action that should not have been performed even if the gun was a lump of rubber.
- jdm2212 4y ago
  A lot of movie scenes involve pointing a gun in the general direction of the camera, and there's generally people standing around the camera (cameraman, etc.). So pointing a gun at people is pretty much unavoidable. That's why there's a professional armorer who is supposed to make sure the gun doesn't have live ammo in it.
  - philwelch 4y ago
    You also don’t need to have someone behind the camera if an actor is pointing the gun directly into the lens. And you definitely don’t need to pull the trigger.
- seanhunter 4y ago
  Honestly how do you think movies get made? Every movie with a firearm in it breaks your firearm safety rule during filming currently.
alamortsubite 4y ago
I have a hard time believing IDEO or the like couldn't come up with a battery-powered recoil mechanism to retrofit to existing guns. At least believable enough that other actors on set would respond to it, with the finer details embellished in post. I also wonder if at least one high-profile Hollywood actor would be willing to front the funds for the development of such a device right now, especially if it helped get him off the hook for the current hot water he's in (which in my mind, it should).
- philwelch 4y ago
  I wonder if this would work energy-wise. A single cartridge of .38 Special—a fairly typical revolver round—can give a projectile around 350J of kinetic energy. 9mm Luger is around 475J. A small rifle round like 5.56x45mm can give a projectile around 1750J of kinetic energy. This is just a fraction of the total energy, which comes out as recoil, operating the gun itself, and lots of heat. So the total chemical energy is probably at least double that. Now, you don’t if want to actually propel projectiles, you can go back to saving half of the energy again, but that just gets us back to the original number. Now let’s assume you’re going to replace the ammunition source with a battery. Batteries are slow to charge and guns are designed to have replaceable magazines so this would work for most gun types. A six round revolver cylinder would need about 2100J while a standard 15 round Glock 19 magazine would need about 7125J and a standard 30 round AR-15 magazine would need 52,500J. An iPhone 14 battery stores about 12.68 Watt-hours, which is over 45,000J. So far, so good. But you still wouldn’t be able to eject brass (because the brass would need to go where the battery goes), and you’d need some sort of electric piston to sit in the chamber and produce the “recoil”. Of course, this still wouldn’t prevent someone from loading a real magazine or cylinder with live rounds, which means this wouldn’t have prevented this incident.
  - alamortsubite 4y ago
    Nice work on the numbers! I don't think brass ejection would be too much of a chore for post. > Of course, this still wouldn’t prevent someone from loading a real magazine or cylinder with live rounds, which means this wouldn’t have prevented this incident. It would, because any gun on a set would no longer need its firing pin.
credit_guy 4y ago
If you take just a single class of gun safety, they'll drill into your head that you should treat any gun as loaded until you personally check it's not. If someone checks a gun and sees there's not bullet in and hands you the gun, it's your duty to check it again. Even if you saw him doing in front of you just seconds before. Checking a gun to see if it's loaded should be a reflex. It does not take long, maybe one second. Why should you treat a gun when you shoot a movie any differently? If Alec's case goes in front of a jury, a lot of people in this country are familiar with how to handle a gun, and they won't give him a pass.
- jdm2212 4y ago
  They were using blanks on set so Baldwin would have to be able to (a) reliably differentiate between blanks and live rounds and (b) re-check the gun for live rounds before each take. Making sure props are safe to use in a scene is just not an actor's job on set.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    (a) is trivial with fairly mininal familiarization, (b) is more the issue (ideally, you would want then to be withbthe armorer, when the gun is orepared for that, ir you would want a process established where they verify the condition before chambering a “blank” round.) But, it boils down tk the only argument against the rule that anyone handling a firearm is responsible for awareness of its condition is that on-set processses have been set up by the responsible authorities in a way which makes that impractical, which would shift the responsibility to those authorities—which, apparently, in this case is (or at a minimum includes) Baldwin in his role as Executive Producer.
    - jdm2212 4y ago
      Executive Producer usually means: this person helped make this movie happen (e.g. helped line up financing, pitched the movie to the studio), but has no direct role in overseeing day-to-day work on the movie. An actor's job is acting. That's basically it. There are lots of things on set that could be dangerous (horses, knives, furniture, electrical wires, forklifts, etc.) and it's the crew's job to make sure that the dangerous stuff is not dangerous when the actor is shooting a scene, or that the actor is carefully briefed on how to use the thing safely. In this case, "cold gun" was the crew briefing him -- telling him the gun could be used because it had no live ammo.
aaron695 4y ago
[dead]
mk_stjames 4y ago
> I don’t know the details of the case, nor the intricacies of the law, but I have a question about movie props. This is a blog post asking a question that has been asked and endlessly discussed on nearly every platform starting the day after the incident, which happened over a year ago. I found nothing of substance to this post.

10 points by mhb 4y ago

This is the most juicy court case in all of recorded history

What baffles me is why they don't create guns that are incapable of firing live rounds. It should be mechanically impossible to fire a live round. The blanks should be keyed or shaped in such a way that guns capable of loading and/or firing them cannot load live rounds unless someone deliberately counterfeits a blank.

andrewfromx 4y ago
I think the argument against that is art and style of guns. You want one specific look for your scene and the cost to make a replica like you explain above is > just finding the real gun.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  Why not find a real gun that looks right for the part, and then run a blob of weld down the inside of the barrel? Why would you even have live rounds on set?
  - mhb 4y ago
    Unsurprisingly, TFA, its comments, and associated links address these issues.
  - marcus0x62 4y ago
    > Why not find a real gun that looks right for the part, and then run a blob of weld down the inside of the barrel? If you did this, and then fired a live round in the gun, it could injure or kill the person holding the gun or someone nearby. > Why would you even have live rounds on set? I cannot imagine there's any acceptable reason to have live rounds on set, and it seems like whoever put live rounds on this movie set should have some explaining to do, at the very least.
    - Gordonjcp 4y ago
      > If you did this, and then fired a live round in the gun, it could injure or kill the person holding the gun or someone nearby. All the more reason to be careful how you load it, then.
      - slingnow 4y ago
        So, the same scenario we're currently in. Jamming a gun barrel so the bullet can't leave the chamber isn't a method of making a gun safe.
        Gordonjcp 4y ago
        But if it was *your* hand that was getting blown off if the gun was incorrectly loaded, you'd make pretty damn sure it was right every time you picked it up.
  - justahuman74 4y ago
    > Why would you even have live rounds on set? I'm going to guess "because america"
roywiggins 4y ago
They do, they're called blank guns or signal guns.
- jfengel 4y ago
  We use those on theatrical stages, where the muzzle flash is less important than safety. It would still be very dangerous to put a live round in one, and unfortunately they do tend to be sized to take regular ammunition (loaded with gunpowder but no projectile). But at least if somebody did put a live round in it, it would not be a death sentence for whoever it was pointed at. As on a movie set, the prop is only ever touched by the armorer and the actor who uses it (who is not supposed to open it unless it's called for in the script).
avisser 4y ago
It's a catch-22 in the US. You can't have a non-lethal gun that looks like a lethal one because the cops will shoot you. Once it looks different, they don't want it in a movie.
- lesuorac 4y ago
  Just green screen out the orange tip.
- onepointsixC 4y ago
  It really isn't. There are competent gun smiths who modify guns to ensure that only blanks can be fired. Real bullets could not be chambered.
  - avisser 4y ago
    Sure, but now you've made it a custom product. Small movies will just use real guns + blanks.
    - onepointsixC 4y ago
      There are armorers who already have all of these custom products and have used them on many, many movies. This movie cheaped out on that and had a armorer who was very inexperienced.
baud147258 4y ago
Didn't they had one on set of the movie?

h2odragon 4y ago

Doesn't matter how much security software you have, when the root password is written on a note posted on the front door. Similarly it don't matter how many times people have had "firearm safety" explained to them, if they'll insist on pointing a firearm at someone and pulling the trigger. That is the failure that matters here. That is the action that should not have been performed even if the gun was a lump of rubber.

jdm2212 4y ago
A lot of movie scenes involve pointing a gun in the general direction of the camera, and there's generally people standing around the camera (cameraman, etc.). So pointing a gun at people is pretty much unavoidable. That's why there's a professional armorer who is supposed to make sure the gun doesn't have live ammo in it.
- philwelch 4y ago
  You also don’t need to have someone behind the camera if an actor is pointing the gun directly into the lens. And you definitely don’t need to pull the trigger.
seanhunter 4y ago
Honestly how do you think movies get made? Every movie with a firearm in it breaks your firearm safety rule during filming currently.

alamortsubite 4y ago

I have a hard time believing IDEO or the like couldn't come up with a battery-powered recoil mechanism to retrofit to existing guns. At least believable enough that other actors on set would respond to it, with the finer details embellished in post. I also wonder if at least one high-profile Hollywood actor would be willing to front the funds for the development of such a device right now, especially if it helped get him off the hook for the current hot water he's in (which in my mind, it should).

philwelch 4y ago
I wonder if this would work energy-wise. A single cartridge of .38 Special—a fairly typical revolver round—can give a projectile around 350J of kinetic energy. 9mm Luger is around 475J. A small rifle round like 5.56x45mm can give a projectile around 1750J of kinetic energy. This is just a fraction of the total energy, which comes out as recoil, operating the gun itself, and lots of heat. So the total chemical energy is probably at least double that. Now, you don’t if want to actually propel projectiles, you can go back to saving half of the energy again, but that just gets us back to the original number. Now let’s assume you’re going to replace the ammunition source with a battery. Batteries are slow to charge and guns are designed to have replaceable magazines so this would work for most gun types. A six round revolver cylinder would need about 2100J while a standard 15 round Glock 19 magazine would need about 7125J and a standard 30 round AR-15 magazine would need 52,500J. An iPhone 14 battery stores about 12.68 Watt-hours, which is over 45,000J. So far, so good. But you still wouldn’t be able to eject brass (because the brass would need to go where the battery goes), and you’d need some sort of electric piston to sit in the chamber and produce the “recoil”. Of course, this still wouldn’t prevent someone from loading a real magazine or cylinder with live rounds, which means this wouldn’t have prevented this incident.
- alamortsubite 4y ago
  Nice work on the numbers! I don't think brass ejection would be too much of a chore for post. > Of course, this still wouldn’t prevent someone from loading a real magazine or cylinder with live rounds, which means this wouldn’t have prevented this incident. It would, because any gun on a set would no longer need its firing pin.

credit_guy 4y ago

If you take just a single class of gun safety, they'll drill into your head that you should treat any gun as loaded until you personally check it's not. If someone checks a gun and sees there's not bullet in and hands you the gun, it's your duty to check it again. Even if you saw him doing in front of you just seconds before. Checking a gun to see if it's loaded should be a reflex. It does not take long, maybe one second. Why should you treat a gun when you shoot a movie any differently? If Alec's case goes in front of a jury, a lot of people in this country are familiar with how to handle a gun, and they won't give him a pass.

jdm2212 4y ago
They were using blanks on set so Baldwin would have to be able to (a) reliably differentiate between blanks and live rounds and (b) re-check the gun for live rounds before each take. Making sure props are safe to use in a scene is just not an actor's job on set.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  (a) is trivial with fairly mininal familiarization, (b) is more the issue (ideally, you would want then to be withbthe armorer, when the gun is orepared for that, ir you would want a process established where they verify the condition before chambering a “blank” round.) But, it boils down tk the only argument against the rule that anyone handling a firearm is responsible for awareness of its condition is that on-set processses have been set up by the responsible authorities in a way which makes that impractical, which would shift the responsibility to those authorities—which, apparently, in this case is (or at a minimum includes) Baldwin in his role as Executive Producer.
  - jdm2212 4y ago
    Executive Producer usually means: this person helped make this movie happen (e.g. helped line up financing, pitched the movie to the studio), but has no direct role in overseeing day-to-day work on the movie. An actor's job is acting. That's basically it. There are lots of things on set that could be dangerous (horses, knives, furniture, electrical wires, forklifts, etc.) and it's the crew's job to make sure that the dangerous stuff is not dangerous when the actor is shooting a scene, or that the actor is carefully briefed on how to use the thing safely. In this case, "cold gun" was the crew briefing him -- telling him the gun could be used because it had no live ammo.

aaron695 4y ago

[dead]

mk_stjames 4y ago

> I don’t know the details of the case, nor the intricacies of the law, but I have a question about movie props. This is a blog post asking a question that has been asked and endlessly discussed on nearly every platform starting the day after the incident, which happened over a year ago. I found nothing of substance to this post.