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: 38 Special is often used in Cowboy Action shooting, and .38 Special wadcutter ammo resembles .38 Special blank ammo and, therefore might be mistaken for a blank by an inexperienced person.
An earlier affidavit said Mr Halls shouted “cold gun” when he gave it to Mr Baldwin to indicate that it had no live bullets.
The affidavit filed on Wednesday said that Ms Gutierrez-Reed told authorities that on the day the shooting occurred, she examined the “dummies” and “ensured they were not ‘hot’ rounds”. When the film crew took a break for lunch, the weapons were “secured inside a safe on the ‘prop truck’”.
“During lunch, [Ms Gutierrez-Reed] stated the ammo was left on a cart on the set, not secured,” the affidavit stated.
Ms Gutierrez-Reed told detectives that following the break for lunch, Sarah Zachary, a member of the crew, “pulled the firearms out of the safe inside the truck, and handed them to her”. She said only a small number of people knew the combination to access the safe.
“During the course of filming, Hannah advised she handed the gun to Alec Baldwin a couple [of] times, and also handed it to David Halls,” the affidavit stated. “When Affiant (the person filing the affidavit) asked about live ammo on set, Hannah responded no live ammo is ever kept on set.”
[snip]
The shooting occurred inside a church building, after which Mr Halls picked up the gun and handed it to Ms Gutierrez-Reed, the affidavit filed on Wednesday said.
“Hannah then was told to ‘open’ the gun so he could see what was inside. David advised he could only remember seeing at least four ‘dummy’ casings with the hole on the side, and one without the hole,” the affidavit added.
Mr Halls [b][color=#FF0000]“advised this round did not have the ‘cap’ on it and was just the casing,” it said.[/color][/b] “David advised the incident was not a deliberate act.” <<
So now we have two version of the story from the AD -- one in which he claims he saw three cartridges in the cylinder, and now this more detailed account in which he claims he saw four dummy cartridges, not three. He specifically states one cartridge "didn't have the cap on it" -- a surefire clue the film's AD doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to guns.
The "hole on the side" -- one can only surmise -- is the AD's clumsy attempt to describe the cartridge "gate" on the rear of the frame just behind the cylinder, which reveals on opening through which cartridges are loaded and extracted from the cylinder in a Colt peacemaker style .45 revolver.
What he means by "cap" on the cartridge is anyone's guess. Does he mean a primer? One cartridge had a primer that was already fired? Or does he mean "cap" as in "hat" and uses that term to refer to the projectile (bullet)???
The description, as inarticulate as it is, suggests that instead of inspecting every cartridge in the gun by removing them and putting them back in, the AD simply look through the cartridge gate at the back end of a few, and perhaps looked through the front end of the cylinder, which would explain how he could see 4 cartridges in a 6-shooter without spinning the cylinder (the 6 o'clock and 12 o'clock cartridges are blocked from view by the barrel and frame.) That would permit detection of the nose of a bullet instead of a crimped brass blank casing.
If the gun were already cocked, and the AD only looked at the front of the cylinder and through the cylinder gate, he could have seen a spent live cartridge in the just fired position, and the remaining 3 visible cartridges -- if blanks -- would not have bullets visible from the front of the cylinder, and the cartridge ready to fire is already under the hammer, where neither the front nor back of it is visible to confirm its identity. It also explains why the cylinder may not have been spun for the AD to exam all the casings. Cocking a S/A revolver locks the cylinder, IIRC.
If the crew were target plinking with live ammo during lunch, and inadvertently left a live cartridge in the gun when the put it back, with a fired cartridge under the the uncocked hammer, then when it is cocked, the remaining live cartridge rotates under the hammer, can't be seen or inspected, and the last fired cartridge is visible, and does not have a bullet, and if the rest of the visible cartridges look to be blanks, the idiots figured the gun was safe.
My observation is this is what you get when you hire COSPLAY gun safety people instead of getting the real thing. These morons mimic the things needed for gun safety without understanding why they do the things they do, why they have to be done in a particular order, and can't skip steps for convenience.
The armorer and the AD are the gun safety analogues to what Richard Feynman characterized as the nitwits who ran around acting like scientists without actually understanding the scientific method -- "Cargo Cult" Scientists.
Alec Baldwin hired himself (I assume the producer hires these people) "Cargo Cult" gun safety people, who knew how to mimic the actions of real gun safety experts, but had no real understanding of what they were doing, or why.
>> "Halls said that Gutierrez-Reed "opens the hatch and spins the drum, and I say 'cold gun' on set," the document states." <<
On what planet is a firearm loaded with primed cartridges containing gunpowder -- with or WITHOUT a BULLET -- characterized as a "cold gun"?
The only gun that is "cold" is one that has been checked to assure that it either has NO cartridges at all, all spent cartridges, or it has dummy cartridges.
A gun with unfired blanks is "HOT" -- if someone puts the end of the barrel in somebody's eye and pulls the trigger, there's likely to be one new one-eyed person on the planet.
A gun with live bullets in it is RED HOT.
The people handling and preparing these firearms don't know their ass from a revolver cylinder; a case of the blind leading the infirm.
It's being reported that the revolver in question is a Pietta in .45 Colt. That means it's an Italian replica of the Colt Single Action Army. Single action in this context means that not only do you need to cock the revolver before every shot--no double action trigger pull--but you also need to load and unload one round at a time. The cylinder doesn't swing out. There's a loading gate that opens and you rotate the cylinder loading one round at a time, and when you're done shooting you have to use the ejector rod to eject each round out the loading gate--one at a time.
Thus, checking the ammo before handing the gun to the actor is a painstaking process compared to modern revolvers. If the gun had ammo in it when picked up, that should have been unloaded as described and then reloaded. Laziness?
What if it wasn't a gun and what if it wasn't a movie set? What if it was a construction site, and a ditch collapsed, and a man died. And what if it turned out that there was no proper shoring on this sitch. And what's more, there had been two prior collapses week before last, but those times everyone managed to scramble out in time, but this time there's a dead body to recover?
Would people be speculating and wondering about what would happen next? The fact that this is a movie set, and it's the Beautiful People, and they all vote and donate Democrat somehow means that the press is treating this differently than they would treat any other fatality in the workplace. I gotta tell ya that if anyone here, Mark or anyone else, pointed a gun at a woman and pulled the trigger, and a now that woman is dead....we'd already be under arrest.
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 gun used in last week's deadly shooting to make sure they were all dummy bullets, according to a newly filed court document.
Assistant director David Halls told police that when the film's armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed "showed him" the firearm that Baldwin used "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 the movie set.
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.
Halls said that Gutierrez-Reed "opens the hatch and spins the drum, and I say 'cold gun' on set," the document states.
>> https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/alec-baldwin-shooting-rust-assistant-director-tells-police-he-didn-t-check-all-rounds-before-giving-gun-to-actor/ar-AAQ1wwb <<
>> Quote:
An earlier affidavit said Mr Halls shouted “cold gun” when he gave it to Mr Baldwin to indicate that it had no live bullets.
The affidavit filed on Wednesday said that Ms Gutierrez-Reed told authorities that on the day the shooting occurred, she examined the “dummies” and “ensured they were not ‘hot’ rounds”. When the film crew took a break for lunch, the weapons were “secured inside a safe on the ‘prop truck’”.
“During lunch, [Ms Gutierrez-Reed] stated the ammo was left on a cart on the set, not secured,” the affidavit stated.
Ms Gutierrez-Reed told detectives that following the break for lunch, Sarah Zachary, a member of the crew, “pulled the firearms out of the safe inside the truck, and handed them to her”. She said only a small number of people knew the combination to access the safe.
“During the course of filming, Hannah advised she handed the gun to Alec Baldwin a couple [of] times, and also handed it to David Halls,” the affidavit stated. “When Affiant (the person filing the affidavit) asked about live ammo on set, Hannah responded no live ammo is ever kept on set.”
[snip]
The shooting occurred inside a church building, after which Mr Halls picked up the gun and handed it to Ms Gutierrez-Reed, the affidavit filed on Wednesday said.
“Hannah then was told to ‘open’ the gun so he could see what was inside. David advised he could only remember seeing at least four ‘dummy’ casings with the hole on the side, and one without the hole,” the affidavit added.
Mr Halls [b][color=#FF0000]“advised this round did not have the ‘cap’ on it and was just the casing,” it said.[/color][/b] “David advised the incident was not a deliberate act.” <<
So now we have two version of the story from the AD -- one in which he claims he saw three cartridges in the cylinder, and now this more detailed account in which he claims he saw four dummy cartridges, not three. He specifically states one cartridge "didn't have the cap on it" -- a surefire clue the film's AD doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to guns.
The "hole on the side" -- one can only surmise -- is the AD's clumsy attempt to describe the cartridge "gate" on the rear of the frame just behind the cylinder, which reveals on opening through which cartridges are loaded and extracted from the cylinder in a Colt peacemaker style .45 revolver.
What he means by "cap" on the cartridge is anyone's guess. Does he mean a primer? One cartridge had a primer that was already fired? Or does he mean "cap" as in "hat" and uses that term to refer to the projectile (bullet)???
The description, as inarticulate as it is, suggests that instead of inspecting every cartridge in the gun by removing them and putting them back in, the AD simply look through the cartridge gate at the back end of a few, and perhaps looked through the front end of the cylinder, which would explain how he could see 4 cartridges in a 6-shooter without spinning the cylinder (the 6 o'clock and 12 o'clock cartridges are blocked from view by the barrel and frame.) That would permit detection of the nose of a bullet instead of a crimped brass blank casing.
If the gun were already cocked, and the AD only looked at the front of the cylinder and through the cylinder gate, he could have seen a spent live cartridge in the just fired position, and the remaining 3 visible cartridges -- if blanks -- would not have bullets visible from the front of the cylinder, and the cartridge ready to fire is already under the hammer, where neither the front nor back of it is visible to confirm its identity. It also explains why the cylinder may not have been spun for the AD to exam all the casings. Cocking a S/A revolver locks the cylinder, IIRC.
If the crew were target plinking with live ammo during lunch, and inadvertently left a live cartridge in the gun when the put it back, with a fired cartridge under the the uncocked hammer, then when it is cocked, the remaining live cartridge rotates under the hammer, can't be seen or inspected, and the last fired cartridge is visible, and does not have a bullet, and if the rest of the visible cartridges look to be blanks, the idiots figured the gun was safe.
My observation is this is what you get when you hire COSPLAY gun safety people instead of getting the real thing. These morons mimic the things needed for gun safety without understanding why they do the things they do, why they have to be done in a particular order, and can't skip steps for convenience.
The armorer and the AD are the gun safety analogues to what Richard Feynman characterized as the nitwits who ran around acting like scientists without actually understanding the scientific method -- "Cargo Cult" Scientists.
Alec Baldwin hired himself (I assume the producer hires these people) "Cargo Cult" gun safety people, who knew how to mimic the actions of real gun safety experts, but had no real understanding of what they were doing, or why.
I'm not at all surprised by any of this. Hang around a movie set for a few days and you'll feel like a genius!
It's 2021 - how much do trigger locks and cylinder cable locks cost?
A few bucks and a few seconds extra work.
This is a disaster of epic proportions. Let's see what the production company's insurance company does.
>> "Halls said that Gutierrez-Reed "opens the hatch and spins the drum, and I say 'cold gun' on set," the document states." <<
On what planet is a firearm loaded with primed cartridges containing gunpowder -- with or WITHOUT a BULLET -- characterized as a "cold gun"?
The only gun that is "cold" is one that has been checked to assure that it either has NO cartridges at all, all spent cartridges, or it has dummy cartridges.
A gun with unfired blanks is "HOT" -- if someone puts the end of the barrel in somebody's eye and pulls the trigger, there's likely to be one new one-eyed person on the planet.
A gun with live bullets in it is RED HOT.
The people handling and preparing these firearms don't know their ass from a revolver cylinder; a case of the blind leading the infirm.
It's being reported that the revolver in question is a Pietta in .45 Colt. That means it's an Italian replica of the Colt Single Action Army. Single action in this context means that not only do you need to cock the revolver before every shot--no double action trigger pull--but you also need to load and unload one round at a time. The cylinder doesn't swing out. There's a loading gate that opens and you rotate the cylinder loading one round at a time, and when you're done shooting you have to use the ejector rod to eject each round out the loading gate--one at a time.
Thus, checking the ammo before handing the gun to the actor is a painstaking process compared to modern revolvers. If the gun had ammo in it when picked up, that should have been unloaded as described and then reloaded. Laziness?
We'll be hearing more I assume.
Let me pose a hypothetical.
What if it wasn't a gun and what if it wasn't a movie set? What if it was a construction site, and a ditch collapsed, and a man died. And what if it turned out that there was no proper shoring on this sitch. And what's more, there had been two prior collapses week before last, but those times everyone managed to scramble out in time, but this time there's a dead body to recover?
Would people be speculating and wondering about what would happen next? The fact that this is a movie set, and it's the Beautiful People, and they all vote and donate Democrat somehow means that the press is treating this differently than they would treat any other fatality in the workplace. I gotta tell ya that if anyone here, Mark or anyone else, pointed a gun at a woman and pulled the trigger, and a now that woman is dead....we'd already be under arrest.
Why do they even bring live rounds on a movie set? For what purpose?
So the ass't director documented his negligence to the police. This is from 10/22. It's damning:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4007331/posts
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 gun used in last week's deadly shooting to make sure they were all dummy bullets, according to a newly filed court document.
Assistant director David Halls told police that when the film's armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed "showed him" the firearm that Baldwin used "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 the movie set.
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.
Halls said that Gutierrez-Reed "opens the hatch and spins the drum, and I say 'cold gun' on set," the document states.
I shoot and reload .45Colt and I completely agree with your characterization and conclusions.