Alec Baldwin’s fatal prop gun shooting accident happened
The actor accidentally shot and killed ‘Rust’ cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza.
Actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on Thursday after he discharged a prop firearm on the New Mexico set of “Rust.” The film’s director Joel Souza was also hit and injured but has since been released from the hospital.
While the police are still investigating the fatal accident, many are left wondering how a prop firearm could leave someone dead and what type of safety protocols were in place to prevent this from happening.
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There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours. I'm fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and— AlecBaldwin(HABF) (@AlecBaldwin) October 22, 2021
This accident is “an unprecedented procedural failure in the history of firearms safety. It’s unbelievable,” film and prop historian Michael Corrie according to Fox news.
“The person responsible for loading and ensuring that the firearm is ready for the scene is called an armorer [or weapons master], and you’re supposed to have an armorer and an assistant armorer. Then there are several steps that you’re supposed to go through to ensure that a weapon is loaded correctly with the correct type of blanks,” Corrie explained. “Because there’s more than one type of blank, there’s lower power and then mid-power and then high-power blanks, and they create different visual effects.”
“Before the actor is even given the weapon, it’s supposed to go through several stages of safety before it’s handed to the actor. And the actor has to entrust that the armorer and everyone else involved have done their job correctly before handing the weapon to the actor,” he continued.
Armorer is a fairly new position in the history of film production, going back only to the 1980s. Before that, the prop master handled everything. Recently, it’s become more common to enlist specialists.
