Alec Baldwin Shooting

[Rev. Rye]

Fine, I'll attempt to meet you half way.

A publicity stunt gone disastrously bad.

But guns are still bad and unnecessary.

I would point out that Brandon Lee died in a very similar mishap on the set of The Crow in 1993. This isn’t a publicity stunt, and, by all accounts, it seems to have been a real fuck-up that’s led to the death of the cinematographer and the wounding of the director.

Apparently, from what I’ve been able to gather, the prop masters had been fired and replaced by non-union workers, and some other crew members decided to take several guns (including the one in the incident) and shot beer cans using live rounds, eventually returning them. Whether or not they were checked is unclear, but apparently, the AD, Dave Halls (a man with a record of safety violations, including another incident where a gun went off) several found it, announced it was not loaded, and then Alec Baldwin took it and started to rehearse a scene where he shot at the camera. While explaining how he was going to do it, the gun discharged (I’m not sure if this was an accidental misfire or if he just aimed wrong) and it hit both of them.

And, while there may be legitimate uses for proper firearms, with special effects having advanced the way they have, it’s honestly becoming harder to justify using proper guns in films when you can just use an Airsoft gun and have VFX take care of the muzzle flashes (The Rookie has apparently decided to do just that from now on.)