One of the clips on this new series “Interrogation Cam” showed part of the initial interview with Alec Baldwin after the shooting incident on his movie set. Sure didn’t take him long to start blaming other people for it; the armorer, a stuntman, the running crew, someone else. ANYONE else. Gun people have a pretty straightforward rule to address this kind of thing, specifically to avoid this kind of confusion:
You are responsible for the gun in your hand.
It doesn’t matter if you stood there and watched the armorer pop the cylinder or rack the slide to clear the weapon before handing it to you; you are to clear it yourself as soon as you take possession of it. Not because a live round may have somehow materialized in there as he handed it off, but because that rule is THAT important, and we keep it holy.
Once you say that rule doesn’t apply on a movie set, you’ll start making more exceptions. Exceptions are unacceptable; you are responsible for the gun in your hand, period paragraph. I’ve been in Baldwin’s EXACT position more times than I’d even try to count. I was the safety officer for the stunt association I belonged to. Before any performance, live or on camera, you give me tthe gun you’ll be using; I’ll clear it in front of you and fill it with Hollywood blank loads.
When I give it back, you’re required to visually inspect it yourself. If I got sloppy and you ended up firing a live round into a crowd, that’d haunt me to my grave. But it’d still be your fault. Oh, and since we mostly did Wild West work, we all carried single actors six shooters just like the one Baldwin shot two people with. “I never touched the trigger” is obvious hogwash, Alec. But even if it got pulled by a rogue gust of wind or something, it still wouldn’t have fired unless you were carrying it around with the hammer back. And that isn’t any smarter than playing with the trigger.
I don’t need anti gun people to agree with me or even like me. I just wish they’d understand that when you hear about something like this, it’s almost never one of us. I’ve been part of the firearm community for nearly 50 years; we’re more scrupulous about gun safety than most people are about anything.
That’s a picture from my stuntman days, jumping from a Jeep to a pickup at 40 mph. Every time I post it I get good natured ribbing about having my finger in the trigger guard even though I’m not on target. That’s how deep sunk the 4 rules of firearm safety are in us; we can’t HELP but spot a broken one, and we WILL have you correct it.
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Bama has been a rodeo cowboy, a professional stuntman, and, for 39 years and counting, a bouncer at various biker bars and redneck rat cage juke joints through the Deep South. He makes cool stuff as Crimson Tied Paragear, using knots his Army Ranger Scoutmaster taught him at Boy Scout summer camp deep in the Okinawan boonies back in 1972.
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