Now We Know The Type Of Ammo Baldwin Used

Originally I speculated that Baldwin fired a round of .38 Special wadcutter ammo at the cinematographer whom he killed. I did so for two reasons taken together:

1. 38 Special is often used in Cowboy Action shooting, and

2. .38 Special wadcutter ammo resembles .38 Special blank ammo and, therefore might be mistaken for a blank by an inexperienced person.

But I was wrong.

Reuters has reported that the ammo used was .45 Colt. That’s the classic Old West round, also know as .45 Long Colt. That simply means that they were trying to be authentic in the movie, since even blank ammo of different calibers will make a different impression on movie viewers.

SANTA FE, N.M. (Reuters) -Actor Alec Baldwin fired a 45 caliber Colt pistol loaded with a live lead bullet in last week’s accidental fatal shooting on the New Mexico set of his movie “Rust” where filmmakers showed “complacency” toward safety, authorities said on Wednesday.

How closely do .45 Colt blanks resemble “live” .45 Colt rounds? To my eye, not as closely as the .38 Special rounds—even an inexperienced person (again, IMO) should have noticed the difference. Here’s what the .45 Colt blanks typically look like:

And this is what “live” .45 Colt looks like:

That image shows what an Old West style round would look like. There are many different brands of modern .45 Colt ammo, but if you look here you’ll see that they’re all pretty easily distinguishable from the blanks. Whatever happened, assuming negligence rather than intent, it was a major, major screw up. Even with the “live” and the “blank” ammo being stored in the same area, the difference should have been immediately apparent to anyone loading the gun in question. And if you were loading the gun and found a round already in one of the cylinders, any sane person would have extracted the round to check what kind of round it was.

Should be a Bonanza! for civil liability. And it sure looks more than ever that involuntary manslaughter could be in play.

UPDATE: I just came across the following at FR—it’s from Insider/Yahoo. This is just crazy. Someone—or maybe some several—need(s) to do jail time. Just the fact that this knucklehead doesn’t even know the proper terminology tells you how low a priority safety probably was:

The assistant director on the New Mexico set of Alec Baldwin's "Rust" movie told police that he did not check all the rounds in the barrel of the prop gun used in last week's deadly shooting to make sure they were all dummy bullets, according to a newly filed court document.

[This is a revolver. The rounds aren’t in the “barrel”, they’re in the cylinder.]

Assistant director David Halls told police that when the film's armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed "showed him" the firearm, used by Baldwin in the on-set shooting, "before continuing rehearsal, he could only remember seeing three rounds," according to a new affidavit obtained by Insider that was filed Wednesday in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.

Halls "advised he should have checked all of them, but didn't and couldn't recall" if Gutierrez-Reed "spun the drum" of the gun, said the affidavit that was included in search warrant documents for a "prop truck" on the movie set.

[“Drum” = cylinder.]

When authorities with the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office asked Halls about the safety protocol on the set in regards to firearms, Halls said, "I check the barrel for obstructions, most of the time there's no live fire," according to the affidavit.

[Lack of obstructions won’t help AT ALL if there are rounds loaded into the cylinder.]

Halls said that Gutierrez-Reed "opens the hatch and spins the drum, and I say 'cold gun' on set," the document states.

[This is not a safety check. The point is to insure that whatever rounds are loaded in the cylinder are NOT LIVE rounds. Only a physical exam of each individual round suffices. ]