Alec Baldwin Shooting

[brewer]

I can see both sides. And I see failure everywhere on this one.

Prop gun does not mean fake gun, toy gun, it's simply short for property. Maybe the entire industry does not take gun safety seriously enough. I wonder how often they give other potentially lethal 'props' to actors without providing safety training. Apparently Baldwin had none.

The thing that gets me is that on this particular set, they'd already had like 3 other accidental discharges due to the incompetence of this production. I agree that if it were just this once, Mr. Baldwin isn't expected to assume anything other than what the expert, who's only job on set is to determine weapon safety and handle the weapons, has said and he isn't responsible. It was an accident. But this happened 3 times already? When does Baldwin become responsible? When exactly is he expected to be like, "This set is unsafe and I either need to demand better conditions or at least be in charge of myself." I mean, is this normal? Does he work in cutting corners productions all the time and it just didn't enter his awareness? Or is he so egotistical that he assumed he would be luckier than he turned out to be?

I mean, it's easy enough to see the uncharitable take in "He shoulda done this and this!" But prior knowledge of 3 accidents with weapons already? It's gotta make sense at some point.

I'm not convinced 'accident' removes all responsibility, just changes the degree.

Let's consider a car crash. If I injure someone in a car accident and it was caused by my maintenance negligence, my degree of responsibility would be in question. If the negligence was cause by the person I hired to maintain the car caused the crash then there is a degree of separation. Did I hire someone reputable, low budget, an unknown from the yellow pages? (yeah I know, old fart reference)

If I just bought a used car, didn't check it's reliability and then crashed, different degree of responsibility. If I got a car and just took off with had no driver safety/training, different.

Also, I wonder how much Baldwin knew about all that was going on at the set. Did he drop in for his scenes and then bounce out remaining blissfully ignorant? Did the crew not tell or hide things? I don't know how involved producers are in the day to day activities, I expect some are relatively absent. Has he said that he knew about the prior accidents? I do agree that as a producer he'll be found liable in one way or another.

How ever it shakes out, whatever the circumstances, I doubt I'll find much sympathy for Baldwin. A life was taken under his watch.