The question is not whether the weapon was supposed to be loaded or empty. From reports it was supposed to be loaded with blanks. Since it was a revolver it might have been realistic looking blanks. The actor may not have been allowed to unload and check the rounds since only the armourer is allowed to load and unload the weapon. This was mentioned previously. Read the whole thread before posting.
Baldwin didn't skip a step. he added a step
Not surprised, he was handed a fully functional handgun, failed to verify its condition (loaded or not), pointed it at someone, and they died when it went off. He's lucky its just Involuntary Manslaughter.
He will likely be convicted of one charge due to his responsibilities as a producer and will get up to a possible 18 months and $5,000 fine. I suspect his Hollywood name will lessen that. If convicted of the second charge, he would get a 5-yr mandatory sentence. The rookie armourer will likely get thrown to the dogs even though her ammo supplier is probably the one who inserted the live ammo along with the blanks.
Shouldn't the armorer be the one who checks that all of the bullets are blanks/dummy ammo before handing the gun to the actor? My memory of the rest of this thread is getting fuzzy, but that's what I thought I remembered.
She is also being charged.
I saw that, just that the post I was replying to indicated that the ammo supplier may have been the one at fault.
I’m only surprised because he’s a celebrity and I expected someone else to be blamed and charged. He definitely carried most, if not all, of the responsibility and most definitely should be charged.
Yes. But from some of the stuff her legal team has been putting out is that the supplier (who supplies loads to various film armourers) hand loaded the ammo and that the blanks and real ammo were not distinguished from each other. The implication is that the supplier put in real ammo in with the blanks and that they could not be identified from each other.
That might be a mitigating factor in sentencing but it’s not legally excusable. Production should have been suspended once it became known that there was live ammo on set.
Ooof. That's bad all around.
IIRC, the cast was shooting the prop guns with live ammo during breaks in the filming. Plinking bottles and the like. I'm not sure if that was done the day of the incident, but still shows a pretty callous disregard for safety.
I heard that rumour too. I don't know what to make of it but if true it would fly in the face of the armourer saying how she was securing the firearms at all times.
I suppose we'll have an opportunity to separate a lot of rumor from fact once people get up on the stand under oath. Not that people don't commit perjury, but most lawyers encourage them to just shade the truth most favorably.
How in the world does an armorer not know a live round with a bullet at the front of the casing from a blank? Even I'm not that danged unobservant! I just had a look on "teh intarwebz" and this is the only blank that looks remotely like a live round, and danged sure an armorer should know better.
As has been discussed here previously, it’s for precisely this reason that they have photorealistic dud ammo when working with revolvers. You can see the rounds in the cylinder from some angles and they have to look the part. Apparently some real bullets found their way on set and that combined with the carelessness of everybody in the causality chain to produce a fatality.
Well, I apologize, then, I did miss that.
