Morrissey said if new testing of the gun showed it was working, she would recharge Baldwin.

  • @PeleSpirit@lemmy.worldOP
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    849 months ago

    I thought this was an onion article and Baldwin wouldn’t agree to stop playing trump on snl, so they charged him again.

    • @stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      This is literally what happened. Someone took satire personally and it wasn’t even about them.

      Worse: they are saying that he, rather than the weapons handler, is somehow responsible as if he should know more than an expert.

      • @radix@lemmy.world
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        -469 months ago

        He and his production team hired the “expert.” They are responsible for vetting and overseeing employees and contractors.

        Even if (big if) he’s not guilty for pulling the trigger (actors take weapons safety courses), he’s completely guilty of negligently surrounding himself with unqualified people in positions that are of life and death importance.

        • @gastationsushi@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Gross negligence can and should be brought up in a civil case. But criminal law is a different animal. People get killed all the time, but you don’t get charged for murder when it’s obviously an accident. Even involuntary manslaughter probably has too high a bar for a rich person to get convicted. Remember the afluenza kid?

        • hiddengoat
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          209 months ago

          A weapons safety course doesn’t mean anything when it comes to criminal liability on a movie set. All that does is absolve the studio if stupid shit happens because an actor did stupid shit. It was not an actor that did stupid shit here, it was the armorer.

          The armorer that Baldwin hired and continued to employ long after she was shown to be ill suited for the job, which made him and the company civilly liable.

          Baldwin and the production company already came to a civil settlement with the deceased’s family.

      • FuglyDuck
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        9 months ago

        Worse: they are saying that he, rather than the weapons handler, is somehow responsible as if he should know more than an expert.

        A bus driver who drives a bus trusting the mechanics kept the brakes in working order and runs over someone doesn’t get to blame the mechanics. They’re supposed to pretrip the bus and check that it’s in working order.

        A maintenance tech doesn’t get to blame the the operator when the operator tells them an industrial machine has been de-energized after opening it up and getting their partner fried. They’re supposed to verify the system is in fact de-energized.

        You shoving a friend out an airplane hatch without a parachute because your sky diving instructor said it was safe…. You don’t get to blame the sky diving instructor.

        You don’t get to hold a firearm and blame the person that handed it to you when you fail extremely basic gun safety. Criminal law doesn’t account for job descriptions.

        If you pick a firearm, you have a duty of care to handle it in a safe manner, Baldwin didn’t. Further, even if the armrorer said it was safe he should have had prior experience handling fire arms screaming “nuhuh”.

        It’s pretty blatantly self evident that Baldwin failed duty of care - evidence exhibit a: the dead body he put in the morgue.

        • @gmtom@lemmy.world
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          309 months ago

          This is literally the opposite of true. We have actually real world cases where airplane engineers fuck up and cause the plane to crash and they are found to be at fault, not the pilots.

          Now go back ro truth social you fucking loser.

        • @joel_feila@lemmy.world
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          39 months ago

          Ok question, how would alec check?

          Gubs on a set can very very realistic looking gun shaped objects, same bullets, blanks, dummy rounds, non functional bulleted shaped objects. This is why on movie sets you have firearm experts.

          • FuglyDuck
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            -29 months ago

            The simplest and surest way is to use a clearing station. basically, they’re steel containers with… stuff… inside that the bullet slows and is caught. I’ve never been to a gun range anywhere that didn’t have one… and that model in the link is meant to be portable. For a revolver, you just dry-fire through the cylinder, and maybe an extra time or two to be sure. any live rounds would go off, and somebody would get bitched at, maybe fired… but nobody would be dead. That is, if Baldwin was running a safe set.

            Baring that, Colt .45 SAA’s are pretty easy to check. You open the loading gate, see the cartridges, so you pull them out and check the cartridges. if you want to check the entire cylinder, the process is fairly simple, and you can see that briefly in this video (which is demonstrating how to carry an antique single action revolver safely. this was the historic method of carry, by the way. And you can see why at the end of video.)

            Generally, props are all marked in a variety of ways that indicate- and obviously so, even if it’s not obvious to the camera- that they’re distinct from real. Cartridges for example are loaded with BB’s so they rattle (and frequently will have holes drilled in the side, and used primers so there’s a giant divot,) non-firing prop guns come in a large variety of differing levels of functionality, and are usually pretty obvious when you’re actively holding it.

            • @joel_feila@lemmy.world
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              39 months ago

              And what is better, training everyone on set to tell the differences between all these kinds if bulletes and guns or have a small number of people?

              Also which one of those things was not done? The armorer is supposed to check the gun and make sure only the proper type of round is loaded.

        • @Case@lemmynsfw.com
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          09 months ago

          I don’t get how casual people are with machines designed solely to kill. It may be perfectly a cut and dry case of self defense, but it was designed to kill.

          That being said, I am pro 2a generally, though I wish proper handling of firearms was taught at different age levels in school. From elementary where, just no, to high school. Additionally, a better system to screen for mental health issues (of which I might not be able to own a firearm) but that would rely on the US having any sort of infrastructure for mental health care.

          My insurance is so shit I could go to a practitioner down the road and pay less, with no insurance taken at all. That’s just for mental health.

          I like the place I’m at, but the shitty insurance really has me looking.

          Of course there is a whole other dialogue on how the US has fallen behind most of the civilized world in medical care, under a variety of parameters - part of that being insurance is tied to your employer. I can accept it or look elsewhere for work.

          • @Rusticus@lemmy.world
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            -19 months ago

            Interesting that you are pro 2a yet recognize that US healthcare has fallen behind the rest of the civilized world. You probably don’t realize these are related.

      • @VelvetStorm@lemmy.world
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        -599 months ago

        As the producer and the actor pulling the trigger, he is ultimately responsible for this. He hired the “professional” who was supposed to make sure there was no live ammo on set, and he was responsible for checking the chamber and magazine before they started the shoot.

        If my friend handed me a gun and I pointed it at someone thinking it was empty and killed someone, I would still be charged with at least manslaughter. I don’t see how this is any different.

        • @meco03211@lemmy.world
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          359 months ago

          If that was literally their job that they are being paid to do and you were specifically using the gun to film a movie involving you pointing that gun at someone and pulling the trigger under the pretense it was cleared and verified by a professional prior to the filming, they should definitely shoulder some burden.

          Arguments can be made about working conditions not being suitable causing mistakes to be made and those conditions were brought on by Baldwin, but then he should be treated almost as two separate people. If it had been a different actor to pull the trigger, would that actor be liable? Would the producer, or whatever role Baldwin had outside of acting, be liable?

          • @VelvetStorm@lemmy.world
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            -209 months ago

            If it was a different actors then yes, they should still be held accountable in some way. Anyone who has ever taken even a basic gun safty course knows the first thing you do when you are given a gun is to check the chamber to see if it is loaded every single time.

            Every time I go so a shooting range with friends and it is their turn to shoot I place my handgun on the bench unloaded with the chamber/Cylinder open and the mag/rounds next to it. Complacency kills and this movie is a perfect example of extreme negligence from the top down.

            • @stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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              79 months ago

              False equivalency. Those are completely different situations. This gun was MEANT to be loaded and chambered because THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO FIRE IT IN FRONT OF A CAMERA. But go on with your “oh I’m so good because I know gun safety and am the expert of the experts now reee”.

        • @stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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          339 months ago

          That isn’t a good example because your friend isn’t an expert and didn’t certify its safety prior to handing it to you.

          • @lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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            -89 months ago

            Doesn’t matter who hands it too you. People fuck up. That’s why these rules are in place. Your argument is bad anyway because it wasn’t the armorer that handed it to him. It was an assistant director (who is also not an expert)

            • @stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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              79 months ago

              As others have explained better than I, you specifically don’t follow the same rules on set as you do at a range. Your arguments are empty.

              • @lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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                -59 months ago

                Assuming the rules they use on movies are different he still didn’t follow them because the gun was given to him by someone who was not an expert. He should have had the armorer check it before he used it if he was not qualified to do so himself.

                • @stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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                  59 months ago

                  lol you admit that you don’t know by then say he’s wrong. I know that your feels are going here but you don’t need to be desperate

                  • @lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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                    -49 months ago

                    Nobody has pointed to a source of what the movies rules actually are so I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. It’s beside the point anyway as he himself has already admitted he was wrong by settling the civil case.

          • @VelvetStorm@lemmy.world
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            -249 months ago

            Anyone that has ever taken even a basic gun safty course knows that 1 you never hand someone a loaded and chambered gun and 2 when you are handed a gun the first thing you do is check to see if it is loaded/chambered.(the real first rule is never point your gun at anything you do t want to destroy but that does not apply to this situation)

            This was extreme negligence from top to bottom and if even 1 person on set that day that handled that gun(especially the last peraon to have it the actor) did their job correctly no one would be dead.

        • @Rusticus@lemmy.world
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          99 months ago

          Is your friend a firearms expert who you specifically hired to provide you a safe weapon?

          “I don’t see how this is any different”.

          Smh

      • FuglyDuck
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        9 months ago

        You pull a firearm’s trigger you bear responsibility for what happens. Period.

        Was the armorer also at fault? Absolutely. Doesn’t matter: Baldwin still failed a duty to check it. Further, as a producer, he was responsible for ensuring the armrorer…. Was competent

        Edit to add: yes, this is absolutely partisan politics, but it doesn’t change that he should have been charged the first time around

        • hiddengoat
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          9 months ago

          You pull a firearm’s trigger you bear responsibility for what happens. Period.

          Utterly wrong. The ONLY person that bears any responsibility for firearm safety on the set of a movie is the armorer.

          • Unless absolutely necessary, no live or blank firing arms should be accessible to actors.
          • When needed, the armorer will verify the safety of the blank or live firearm and hand it to the actor. Depending on the armorer and the situation they may not even allow the actor to do something as simple as turn the safety off.
          • After firing the weapon, the armorer will take the firearm from the actor, clear it, and remove it from the set.

          One person has that responsibility. In situations where there are multiple live or blank firing arms there may be multiple individuals with those same resposibilities, but ultimately it will still come down to the one in charge.

          Repeat after me: A MOVIE SET IS NOT A GUN RANGE. You are not dealing with even twice a year hobbyist shooters. You are not in a controlled environment. The protocols that are used for firearms on set have been developed after decades of trial and error, and these are situations where said error ends in death. Trying to apply range logic to a movie set is what gets people killed, which is why sets do not work like that. You have one dedicated professional whose job is ensuring the safety of everyone on set WRT firearms. At no point did Baldwin have any responsibility to check any weapon as any weapon available to him at that time, by protocol, should have ONLY been a “weapon shaped object.” That is, a chunk of rubber or plastic molded from a real weapon that’s used for doing things like blocking shots (which is what Baldwin was doing) and generally carrying around a scene. Instead, the armorer had zero control over where firearms ended up and Baldwin picked up what he thought was a prop gun. Instead, it was a loaded live firearm. The scene involved Baldwin pointing a gun at the camera and pulling the trigger.

          In no way is Baldwin criminally liable here.

          Note I say nothing about civil liability. In my opinion, he’s is absolutely responsible for helping create a lax working environment by continuing to employ an armorer that clearly did not give a shit about doing their job properly.

          EDIT to mention that Baldwin and the production company VERY quickly came to a settlement agreement with the family of the deceased. They were always going to win so it basically just skipped over a meaningless trial.

          https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-approves-settlement-rust-shooting-lawsuit-halyna-hutchins/story?id=99788957

          • @afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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            29 months ago

            Might be a good argument for using clearly fake stuff in movies further on. Just hand the actor a TV remote and CGI in a hand gun or a plastic sci-fi “gun” that has no means of firing anything.

            • @AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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              29 months ago

              George Lucas turned guns into walkie talkies for the E.T. rerelease. Going the other way should be possible.

          • @lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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            -79 months ago

            Baldwin didn’t receive the gun from the armorer. So he wasn’t even following your rules either. He’s still responsible. If he had followed the rules as you stated, upon being handed the gun by the assistant director he should have said “you’re not the armorer” and refused to handle it until it was verified as safe by the armorer.

            • hiddengoat
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              59 months ago

              You’re taking bits and pieces and ignoring the full context, which is a shit thing to do.

              • The firearm should never have been available to an AD in the first place, or to anyone but the armorer.
              • On a set the assumption would be that anything available to someone that wasn’t an armorer would be a non-firing replica.
              • The armorer alone is tasked with firearm safety on the set.

              This is how it works. This is how the entire legality of the situation is established. As long as everyone is acting in good faith the liability does not fall to them, it falls to the armorer. When Baldwin received the weapon he did so believing it to be a non-firing replica, not an actual loaded firearm, as it would not be proper protocol for a loaded firearm to be available to anyone other than the armorer.

              He has already settled the civil liability aspect with the victims and families. That was done rather quickly. As producer, he was liable for the hiring and continual employment of the incompetent armorer. That makes him liable on a civil level.

              He has zero criminal culpability here, no matter how hard the DA tries. His roles as producer and actor are legally distinct.

          • FuglyDuck
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            -289 months ago

            When your holding a firearm, You don’t get to “not my job” basic fucking gun safety.

            Professionally, as an actor, it wasn’t Baldwins job. The criminal code doesn’t care what was in his job description

            Criminally, it doesn’t matter. There is a long sequence of actions that Baldwin should have taken that he did not take, any one of which would have prevented this from happening.

            That sequence:

            • hiring a competent armorer who: didn’t have live ammo, who cleared fired arms, ensured all staff handling the weapon were trained in firearm safety, and that a multi-layered safety protocol was strictly adhered to.
            • could have used a non-firing replica for the blocking shots
            • could have cleared the firearm
            • could have not pointed the weapon at other people
            • could have not pulled the trigger.

            But nope. Apparently it’s not his job and now someone is fucking dead.

            • hiddengoat
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              149 months ago

              You know literally nothing about anything. I already explained to you why none of your points are relevant. Stop making yourself look like more of an an idiot by continuing to post your ignorance to the world.

              • FuglyDuck
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                -129 months ago

                Says the guy quoting civil litigation in a discussion of criminal charges. I wasn’t going to go there even if it is like 6th grade civics level…. But now your just being insulting.

                Just because another person also had a duty of care- doesn’t mean Baldwin didn’t.

                It’s simple tragic fact that Baldwin failed in his obligation to handle a weapon that was fundamentally designed to kill humans in a safe manner. If he had done anything to even half ass checking that weapon Hutchinson would still be alive.

                That the armorer failed to do their job, doesn’t change that simple fact. When you’re dealing with things that have “death” as a likely consequence… you don’t rely on a single person, which is why the armrorer is also guilty. They both are.

                Nothing you are saying actually changed that Baldwin’s own actions lead directly to it- and if we swap out literally any other actor, that don’t change.

                Because he still pointed a weapon fundamentally designed to murder people, at Hutchinson, and pulled the trigger.

                Reasonable people don’t do that without excessive amounts of paranoia- including checking a firearm that takes ten seconds to safely check.

                • @brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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                  89 months ago

                  I find some humor in the wiki link you provided for duty of care, the first sentence starts with “In tort law” as you keep trying to use it for criminal law.

                  There are no legal requirements for firearm handling that requires someone to check for a load. When you, and many others, say “the first rule of firearms” I invite you to provide us with a legal definition of these rules.

                  There is no expectation for a non-expert to identify the differences between blanks, dummy, and live rounds.

                  While there was likely gross negligence on the set, I’m not sure it rises to the level of criminal liability. A film set is a unique situation where there are different rules to firearm handling. This is a simple fact that cannot be overlooked. The rules of firearms as you have been trained on and as you understand them simply don’t apply.

                  • FuglyDuck
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                    -39 months ago

                    Lol.

                    So your saying that an adult picking up a firearm and waiving it around cocking it and pulling the trigger (accidentally or otherwise,) isn’t negligent when that firearm happens to go off?

                    Yes that article mostly covers tort law which is civil. esp. In this case the negligence rose to the level of criminality, and the test for duty of care applied to show he was being negligent.

                    Oh, by the way. The armorer wasn’t even on site. He was handed the weapon by a non-expert who declared it cold. Adding another failed check: “hey you’re not the armorer!” Would have also saved his victim’s life.

                    But nope. They had a schedule to keep. So whatever. What’s the worst that could happen?

                    You’re acting like Baldwin is not a reasonable human- he’s not a toddler who you would have no expectation of knowing “hey maybe I shouldn’t do this”. That it was on set in a staged scenario doesn’t absolve people of their personal responsibility.

                • @stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml
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                  39 months ago

                  Wow, your feelings got so hurt that you went ad hominem. Congratulations on proving that you don’t have a point to stand on.

        • @gastationsushi@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Baldwin’s defense just needs one juror*. If they are able to define this is case as partisan politics, I bet all 12 vote to acquit in less than an hour.

          Only internet weirdos would want to spend days arguing over this case, normie jurors want to go home.

          *takes one juror to hang a jury not acquit.

          • FuglyDuck
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            9 months ago

            The only reason Baldwin hasn’t been already found guilty of inv. manslaughter is because people like his movies. You’re right, though.

            This is a prime example of tiered justice. If any normal worker was handed a firearm, and told it was unloaded when it wasn’t they’d be held criminally liable along with the idiot who didn’t. And that doesn’t even account for it bejng the boss being handed the firearm