OK guys, listen here. I know you are good people who understand that things, even stupid things, may happen without malice or carelessness . And yes, there might be a remote chance that an event may happen because certain rogue ducks align, and they result in an accident.
But fuck it: It is time we are done with passing the Benefit of the Doubt like it was cheap Halloween candy. They sure as hell stopped long ago to give our side the courtesy of it and it is time we pay them back by applying the same judgement and rules to them times ten.
Stop coming up with shit to explain/exonerate that Baldwin prick. His arrogance killed a woman, and he will probably get away with it because undue power will be brought down on the local county and a humongous PR campaign is already in the motion to paint the asshole like a victim rather than the killer.
You and I do not get that privilege. Stop giving him more freebies.
Is that the sound of a woodchipper coming to life? Its time for ALL these people to be treated like they treat us…
Where is Judge Roy Bean when you need him?
I have said since it happened: the four rules are the four rules for a reason. You don’t get a pass because you are playing make believe in front of a camera. You can’t pass your responsibilities on to others.
1 You pointed a gun at someone without ensuring that it was unloaded. The fact the someone else TOLD you it was unloaded is not sufficient. You have a responsibility to check it yourself.
2 You pointed that gun at someone. There is no reason for that.
3 You cocked that single action pistol and pulled the trigger. I know you say that you didn’t, but there is no other explanation. Guns don’t just “go off”
4 There was a second person behind the first person that you had it pointed at.
You might get away with breaking one or even two rules on occasion. If you routinely break all four, sooner or later, it catches up to you. There are some who claim that actors are too stupid to be able to learn to handle firearms safely. I think that’s bullshit, but even if it isn’t, the fact that you are that stupid doesn’t absolve you of your responsibility, no matter how rich and famous you are.
Isn’t it odd that the same people who call Kyle Rittenhouse a murderer are the ones excusing Baldwin for killing someone?
1 No, you don’t.
2 Yes, there was.
3 Yes on the first point, but not necessarily so on the second point. Single actions are notoriously easy to fire simply by letting off a partially cocked hammer, accidentally or on purpose (or even going off from simply jumping off a horse with a round under the hammer, hence the “load five, one empty” rule for them). QED
4 So what? There was a third person in front of both of them, over whom the bullet passed, but that doesn’t add a charge of attempted homicide to the docket either.
Anybody can do this if we’re just gainsaying.
The “Four Rules” aren’t four laws, and never have been.
Game over. Case dismissed.
No one (AFAIK) has argued Baldwin’s, or all actors’, stupidity grants them a pass on responsibility. Some people haven’t been bright enough to suss that out, because they’re too busy doing the “La-la-la, I can’t hear you, I’ve got my fingers in my ears!” routine.
What actor stupidity does is illustrate why the last person you’d want to hold responsible for firearms safety, anywhere, any time, for any reason on God’s green earth, would be actors, and why handing them anything but a foam rubber gun borders on professional negligence.
Hiring subject matter experts on weapons for productions, and making them entirely responsible for weapons safety on productions, is what grants actors a pass.
This is why mechanics and not pilots maintain aircraft engines, and why pilots and not flight attendants fly the planes.
This is also why the CEO of UPS or FedEx doesn’t go to jail every time one of their drivers gets drunk, blows a red light, and kills someone. But the driver responsible for the act does. When you’re hired to do something, and you don’t do it, and people die, you own that. Not the person your negligence left holding the bag.
It’s not a hard concept in criminal law, no matter how aggravating some people continue to find it.
Baldwin’s a complete ass, and a waste of skin and oxygen, beyond question. (If he had Stage 5 dick cancer, got set on fire accidentally, and the flames were beaten out with sickles, axes, and sledge hammers, it would be only too funny.)
Fortunately for all of humanity, such lack of worth as a human being isn’t sufficient probable cause in and of itself for criminal prosecution.
But if there is any trial, Baldwin will absolutely be there.
He’ll be a witness for the prosecution.
And if this gun can kill without anyone pulling the trigger, then the follow on is any gun can kill without its trigger being pulled. So all guns should be banned!
You better believe its coming.
I agree. I don’t care who had a live round on the set (which, I imagine, is not actually a crime), or who put the round in the gun, or who left it in the gun before it was put on the prop cart, or who should have checked the gun before handing it to Alec Baldwin, or whether he checked it after having it handed to him, or whether he pulled the trigger, or the gun malfunctioned or magical pixie dust made the gun go off.
Alec Baldwin pointed a (real, not prop) gun at two people.
Rule #2: Never allow the muzzle to cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
He was negligent. All of the rest is just distraction and noise.
I don’t believe he intended to harm anyone, but I doubt the guy who was fiddling with his radio when he blew through the stop light and T-boned my sister’s car intended to harm her either.
Alec Baldwin’s lack of bad intent won’t bring back Halyna Hutchins any more than the lack of bad intent of the driver that hit my sister will heal the permanent brain injury she suffered.
Neither meant to do harm but they acted in a negligent manner which resulted in harm. Alec Baldwin’s status as a celebrity shouldn’t grant him immunity from the consequences of his actions.
Alec Baldwin maybe didn’t know how to check the gun?
So what? If he doesn’t know, then he should have found someone knowledgeable and had her/him show Alec how to do it, and then watch Alec do it right. A great boss told me: If you cannot do any task, then get someone to show you the right way to do it.
Here’s a link to the entire corpus of New Mexico state law, including all the criminal statutes.
https://law.justia.com/codes/new-mexico/2020/
I’ll send $20 cash via Miguel to the first person who can locate Cooper’s “Four Gun-Handling Good Ideas” anywhere within them, and post the link.
Go.
Failing that, as 100% of you will, what you wish was in there, but isn’t, counts for squat in an actual court of law.
Wish for Baldwin’s criminal culpability in one hand, and crap in the other one, and tell us which one fills up first. Then you’ll know what you’ve got to work with.
Why the fetish about ritually bashing your heads against a brick wall?
D’ya know what the secret about that is?
It feels so good to stop.
Absurd. Negligence consists in ignoring rules of safe conduct that any normal prudent person active in that activity is expected to know. It does not require that such rules are explicitly spelled out in the text of statutes.
For example, if you’re working on the roof of a building and drop the bricks you’re breaking off the old chimney over the edge, injuring a passerby, you’re negligent. It’s not required that someone has to find a law saying “you shall not drop bricks off the roof of a building”.
Fair enough.
1) So, what are the rules that should be known by everyone for fake weapons not firing anything, or only firing blanks in a pretend scenario, and how are they different (or why are they the same) from if it were real weapons with live rounds? (When you fail this question, because you don’t know those rules, be aware that we’ll call Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Keanu Reeves, Tom Hanks, Liam Neeson, and every other actor who’s ever fired a gun on a production to give their expert testimony in rebuttal. Then we’ll ask you, based on your knowledge of other motion pictures, whether you think it’s okay to swing swords and shoot arrows at orcs, whether wizards can fly broomsticks, and if it’s okay to jump from an aircraft without a parachute if you have a vibranium shield. If, at any point in time, you note that none of that is real, you have defaulted on the question to acquittal on all charges for Baldwin.)
Show all work.
2) Who brought the functional weapon to the set of Rust, thereby changing the expected conditions of the day’s work?
3) Who brought live rounds onto that same production set, in violation of specific safety guidelines to the contrary?
4) Who loaded the live rounds into the real gun, instead of dummy rounds in a non-firing prop gun, and then announced it was no such thing, and then handed it to someone neither responsible for nor charged with ensuring any of those things had not ever happened?
5) If two weapons checkers, including one experienced armorer, couldn’t see that had happened, how would anyone else, or any endless number of anyones, ever know that had happened, short of pulling the hammer back and firing one to six times?
The point you so cavalierly overlooked is that you’re basing your entire standard for negligence on a standard which doesn’t apply, and could never apply, on a production set. They fight with foam rubber swords. They string people up by wires and harnesses and fly them across the scenery. They stab people with fake knives, in the chest. So nothing you think you know has any bearing on a set where everything you think you’re seeing is illusion. You (and I don’t mean you personally, I mean every swinging Richard yapping from ignorance about “negligence” on a movie set) are the concrete-thinking guy with Asperger’s yelling at Penn & Teller that it’s unsafe to lower a man headfirst into a tank of water for a card trick,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58xyjOFkpxk
or to staple your hand,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG93Yz3r-Uk
and you’re rushing the stage, because you’ve forgotten that it’s all an illusion.
[Pro tip: secret agents shouldn’t ski off a cliff and deploy a parachute, run across a row of alligators, or freejump off a dam to access a hidden nerve gas lab. MI6 knows this without being told. James Bond doesn’t. ♫One of these things is not like the other…♫]
Two people screwed that pooch on Rust, and turned a day in the illusion factory into a deadly reality, and neither of their names are Alec Baldwin. Those two alone are who’s legally and entirely culpable for the tragedy that day. Period.
Baldwin followed the exact rules that he knew, and the other two – particularly the armorer – broke every single rule, responsibility, and standard of conduct of any person doing her job, and she did so flagrantly, and with gross negligence, even if not deliberate malicious intent.
Baldwin did absolutely nothing that any other actor wouldn’t have done, which meets your exact standard of “safe conduct that any normal prudent person active in that activity is expected to know“.
I know you didn’t mean to, but by your exact standard, you’ve just acquitted Baldwin, and convicted Gutierrez-Reed and Halls.
Welcome to reality.
Pisser, isn’t it?
Aesop: Multiple people have explained this to you in multiple ways. Whether or not Baldwin is guilty of manslaughter is not a matter of law, but of fact. The law in New Mexico lays it out quite plainly:
30-2-3. Manslaughter.
Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice.
B. Involuntary manslaughter consists of manslaughter committed in the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to felony, or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death in an unlawful manner or without due caution and circumspection.
Negligent use of weapon. — A conviction of involuntary manslaughter by negligent use of a weapon requires negligence which is ordinary. State v. Grubbs, 1973-NMCA-096, 85 N.M. 365, 512 P.2d 693, overruled on other grounds, Santillanes v. State, 1993-NMSC-012, 115 N.M. 215, 849 P.2d 358; State v. Yarborough, 1995-NMCA-116, 120 N.M. 669, 905 P.2d 209.
So it will come down, if it ever gets that far, to whether or not the jury (who is the primary finder of fact in our legal system) thinks that Baldwin acted with due caution and circumspection. If they find that he did not, then he is guilty of manslaughter.
One of the things that you find throughout our legal system is the “reasonable adult” standard, that is, what would a reasonable adult do in similar circumstances. That is the reason why you won’t find Cooper’s four rules in the statutes, and you are being an insolent ass by demanding that they be there in order for Baldwin to be guilty. You can bet your ass that, should this go to court, the prosecutor is going to bring a firearms safety expert into that courtroom, and that person will testify that you ALWAYS ensure guns are unloaded before you handle them, and that it is not safe to point them at other people.
Good luck convincing a jury that you need to point a gun at the person staffing the camera in order to get a good picture, since we seem to have cameras on Mars that are millions of miles away and still manage to get good pictures.
Unless, of course, you are willing to stand in front of a gun that I am pointing at you whilst I pull the trigger. It will be perfectly safe though, because someone told me it was unloaded.
I get that you wish you could take a puff or two on old Baldwin’s gun, but you are wrong on this one, and no amount of defending his dumb ass is gonna get you a mouthful of his Colt.
Now all you’ve got is descent to juvenile playground ad hominem, because you can’t huff and puff your way to a legal argument that would withstand ten seconds’ scrutiny?
Color me shocked.
Baldwin’s a dick. Was, is, and always will be. Now, so are you. Walk tall.
Counsel: “So, Mr. Baldwin, can you point to ANYTHING you did to make sure the gun was safe to point at the camera, as the script called for?”
Baldwin: “Yes sir, I did. The production hired an experienced armorer and weapons handler, who was double-checked each and every time a weapon was handed to any actor on set by an assistant, and they both were responsible – both by customary production practice and explicit safety rules in place in the industry for decades – for ensuring all weapons were safe to handle on set in every respect, even to pointing them at the camera or other actors, exactly as has been done for millions of rounds of gunfire on thousands of movies.”
Counsel: “Then why didn’t you check the gun yourself?”
Baldwin: Besides it not being my job to do so for a host of good reasons, I didn’t do that because two other people, with far more experience than I have with weapons had already done so, and loudly announced to everyone on the set, including the victims, who both knew explicitly that the scene specifically called for the gun to be pointed and fired right at the camera, that the weapon was “cold”, i.e. not loaded with even so much as a blank round. If I’d “checked” the gun, all I would have seen was the same six loaded rounds that Ms. Gutierrez-Reed and Mr. Halls saw before they handed the gun to me, and it wouldn’t have changed anything I did, or what any other person would have done, because that’s exactly how the gun was supposed to look for that scene. Since we were pointing at the camera for the rehearsal, there had to be six chambers loaded for the muzzle-on camera shot, and they were supposed to be all dummy rounds for that rehearsal, and blanks put in only for the actual scene to be filmed. Live rounds shouldn’t have been anywhere on the production whatsoever, for any reason.”
Counsel: Then why did the gun fire a live round, and kill your cinematographer and wound your director? Isn’t that entirely your fault?
Baldwin: “The weapon fired because the people expressly hired to make sure that never happened obviously failed in every single aspect of their jobs, ignoring dozens and dozens of explicit safety regulations for exactly this situation, and put a live round in a functional firearm right before a rehearsal, instead of dummy rounds in a prop gun incapable of ever firing a live round, something they’re supposed to make sure is NEVER allowed to happen on any production set, ever. They had one job, and they totally failed to do it. That’s no more my fault, than a plane crash would be the fault of an airline pilot if the engines fall off the wings in flight because the mechanics didn’t attach them correctly. I did something that day that hundreds of actors have done thousands of times, without a single fatality in over 28 years, to that day. The armorer and her assistant did something that they’re never, EVER supposed to do.”
Your notional firearms expert will be shown film clips, and look like the prizewinning ass of all time when he confidently explains that every movie in the last 100 years – most of which the jury will have seen and enjoyed multiple times long before the trial – is unsafe at any speed, about the time that the defense counsel asks him how he explains only 3 fatalities in recorded history for all that imaginary unsafety.
Then he’ll be asked what experience he has with make-believe look-alike weapons shooting blanks (which will be Jack and Squat), and whether any of the rules you think are the be-all end-all last word on everything might not properly apply to any one of 50,000 motion pictures and 100,000 TV shows, when real guns and real bullets aren’t to be used on-production on a first unit set ever, and if, just maybe, he’s trying to apply his total lack of expertise in an apples and oranges kind of way, from complete ignorance. The jury will be laughing out loud long before that point, and it’ll be at him, not with him. By the time they’re done with him, he’ll crawl out of the court with a pillowcase on his head to hide his face, and probably vow never to open his mouth about film production shooting situations again the rest of his life. Something you might wish to consider as well.
All of which is going to leave any potential prosecution more shot full of holes than the victims in this incident.
I get that’s too hard for a lot of people to grasp because of Dunning-Kruger, which is why you and multiple others keep deliberately misstating the entire case endlessly despite painstaking explanation, but unlike you, that D.A. can see what I just typed coming at her like an express freight train from a country mile away, and even political pressure isn’t likely to induce her to look like a total jackass, point that legal gun at her own face, and blow her own head off figuratively, in open court, in front of a judge, a jury, and 200 TV cameras, just to appease lackwits in the internet peanut gallery wanting a kneejerk persecution because of sheer Baldwin hatred.
The only people looking and sounding more asinine than Baldwin in this are all the ignorant knuckleheads braying for his head on a legal platter.
What Baldwin has to fear most at this point is that he’ll be judged by twelve people too stupid to avoid jury duty, a situation which may yet give you some shreds of optimism.
I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
He is going to go scot-free not because he is not responsible for the killing but because he is royalty who will be issued a Political and Entertainment “Get Out Of Jail” card.
I just simply want him judged with the same inquisitorial rage and Media dissection that any one of us “unerwünschte” would have to go through for 90% less of what he did.
And I am sure he will fondly remember how you defended his royal entitlement to be considered your Master and maybe you shall be lucky to get a Primae Nocte with him. Do take plenty petrolatum.