Estimated reading time: 13 minutes
There is a natural allure to firearms. Guns represent power under control. In responsible hands, firearms can be a great source of recreational enjoyment, security in sketchy spaces, and inimitable peace of mind. In the wrong hands, however, the results can be catastrophic.
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Being as dispassionate as I’m able–on Thursday, 21 October 2021, a handgun went off during the filming of the Alec Baldwin Western movie Rust. The cast and crew were rehearsing an upcoming scene inside a chapel used as a set for the film. The weapon was in Baldwin’s hands when it discharged.
The .45-caliber lead bullet struck the director of photography, a Ukrainian-born woman named Halyna Hutchins, in the chest and penetrated through and through. That same round hit the director, Joel Souza, in the shoulder. Hutchins was airlifted to a nearby trauma center but did not survive. Souza underwent surgery to remove the bullet and recovered. The smoke had barely cleared before lawsuits began flying.
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Frenetic Butt Covering
I read a lot about this horrible incident. All of the major players had agendas. Everyone’s statements, platitudes, and actions seemed founded upon an innate drive to exonerate themselves. Accusations ran the gamut.
There were allegations that the producers, Baldwin among them, had cut both corners and costs to make the movie on the cheap, setting up a toxic environment that allowed the accident to happen. The armorer, a relatively inexperienced young woman named Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was accused of drinking excessively and doing drugs in the evenings between shoots. For his part, Baldwin swore passionately that the gun was defective and fired without his having pulled the trigger.
All that stuff seems suspect in retrospect. As a result, I used the official report from the State of New Mexico Environment Department of the Occupational Health and Safety Bureau as my primary source. I figured if anything it might be dispassionate and reliable, that would be it.
Alec Baldwin
Full disclosure, I don’t care much for Alec Baldwin or his politics. I thought he was fine in The Hunt For Red October, but I can’t recall seeing him in anything else that moved me. Before this event, Baldwin jabbered incessantly about the necessity for ever-greater gun control laws. He also played the recurrent satirical Donald Trump character on Saturday Night Life. Baldwin’s depiction was consistently caustic, angry, and mean. I just never found it funny.
My favorite Alec Baldwin gun control quote was directed against NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch. He said, “And she doesn’t care how many dead bodies she has to step over in that pursuit. The Second Amendment is not a moral credit card that buys you all the guns you want.”
To my knowledge, Dana Loesch never actually shot anybody. Needless to say, that particular platitude did not age well.
Halyna Hutchins
Halyna Hutchins was born on 9 April 1979, in Gorodets, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Her dad was an officer in the Soviet Navy. She grew up on military bases and first became interested in film while coming of age in that cold world. She earned a degree in international journalism and helped produce documentary films in Eastern Europe. While traveling in the US, she met Matthew Hutchins. They subsequently married and had a son named Andros.
Halyna made her living for a time as a fashion photographer. Like most folks in her weird business, she worked on a variety of piddly projects before earning her spot in the big time. In 2006, she served as an associate producer on the Discovery Channel documentary World’s Tallest Man about the giant Leonid Stadnyk. She later earned a degree in film production from UCLA as well as a master’s from the American Film Institute Conservatory. Several full-length movies as well as a stint on The Walking Dead later, she found herself the director of photography on Rust.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is the stepdaughter of esteemed American exhibition shooter, stuntman, and movie armorer, Thell Reed. She grew up around firearms. Rust was her second film as an armorer.
Her first was The Old Way. During filming this picture, several cast members complained about her lack of professionalism around weapons. In one incident, she inadvertently discharged a blank-firing firearm, causing Nicolas Cage to storm off of the set. However, Nic Cage seems a bit unbalanced himself. It might not take much to get him to storm off of something.
Fake Ammo, Not Fake Firearms
There were thirteen different live Colt-style revolvers used in the production. They were all manufactured by Uberti, Pietta, and Cimarron. The weapon in question was a Pietta 1873 Peacemaker clone in .45 Long Colt. These guns were maintained under the control of the props department. The props department for this production was small. Though there was a definitive chain of command that led up to Baldwin, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed had ultimate responsibility for the weapons.
Blank and dummy rounds came from PDQ Arm and Props based in Albuquerque. Dummy rounds were supposed to be distinguished by a small hole drilled in the case, a dented primer, or the presence of a BB inside the case that rattled noticeably when shaken. These dummy rounds were used in cartridge belts as well as in the weapons themselves so that bullets would be visible when viewed from the front.
Prior Performance
Before the lethal shooting, there were two negligent discharges on set. In one case, a revolver charged with blanks went off as it was being loaded by Sarah Zachary, the Props Master. Zachary later reported that the hammer slipped from underneath her thumb as she was attempting to decock the gun.
Later that same day, Blake Teixiera, Alec Baldwin’s stunt double, experienced an accidental discharge of a blank round from a lever-action rifle while purportedly alone. He later said, “It just went off.” Gutierrez-Reed postulated that he had handled the weapon too roughly.
Actors are supposed to undergo training before handling weapons on set. When it was time for Baldwin to get his, he was preoccupied on the phone. As he was the boss, nobody pressed him on the issue.
The Alec Baldwin Shooting
David Halls was the Assistant Director. He had been fired from a previous production, Freedom’s Path, after the unexpected discharge of a firearm on set injured a crew member. On the day of the lethal shooting, Halls handed Baldwin a revolver purportedly loaded with dummy rounds and loudly announced, “Cold Gun!” on the set.
The scene in question involved Baldwin removing the weapon from its holster and pointing it at the camera. The three people behind the computer monitor were roughly two feet from the muzzle of the gun. As the crew maneuvered the camera to remove a shadow, Baldwin said, “So, I guess I’m gonna take this out, pull it, and go, ‘Bang!” He then drew the weapon and discharged it a single time, striking both Hutchins and Souza.
Alec Baldwin, Esteemed Gun Expert
Baldwin later claimed, “The trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never. I have no idea [how a bullet got in there]. Someone put a live bullet in a gun. A bullet that wasn’t even supposed to be on the property.”
Baldwin then went on to undertake a flawed effort at explaining what fanning a vintage six-gun entailed. He speciously claimed that this could be successfully undertaken without pulling the trigger. However, consider the source…
Anyone who has ever spent any time around single-action revolvers appreciates that the trigger must be held back for the gun to fire even when fanning the hammer. The FBI later did an in-depth assessment of the weapon and found it to be in good working order. They officially announced that the gun would not have fired had the trigger not been pulled.
Fallout
Baldwin visited with Halyna’s husband and 9-year-old son immediately afterward to offer his heartfelt condolences. Then everybody sued everybody. In his first sit-down interview after Halyna’s death, Baldwin explicitly stated that he did not feel guilty about anything. However, there is a fair possibility his lawyers told him to say that.
Lawyers for Gutierrez-Reed released this statement, “Safety is Hannah’s number one priority on set. Ultimately this set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced. Hannah has no idea where the live rounds came from…Hannah still, to this day, has never had an accidental discharge.”
Actions Have Consequences
Whatever. The actual source of the live ammo has, as near as I could ascertain, not been definitively determined. There were rumors from the supplier that the dummy rounds were faulty, but PDQ Arm and Props made a compelling argument that this was not the case. There was even a story that somebody had been firing live rounds out of the guns nearby after filming knocked off in the evening, but I could not find any real evidence of that. Of the 500 or so remaining rounds confiscated from the prop department and gun belts on the set, six were found to be live.
Serious Charges After Alec Baldwin Mistake
New Mexico’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau fined the Rust production company $136,793 for a wide variety of safety violations. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was charged with involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence for supposedly expeditiously disposing of her stash of cocaine. She was convicted of the first, acquitted of the second, and subsequently sentenced to 18 months in prison.
READ MORE: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Alec Baldwin was due to be tried for involuntary manslaughter himself. However, the defense alleged that the prosecution failed to disclose critical information concerning the source of the live ammunition involved in the shooting. The judge agreed and dismissed the charges with prejudice. The prosecutor was livid. That was a controversial decision, to say the least. I suppose it’s good to be king.
At Least the Lawyers Win
Alec Baldwin has killed more people than any law-abiding civilian gun owner I know. As I was researching this piece, I quit counting at nine civil lawsuits. Legendary plaintiff’s attorney Gloria Allred was neck deep in it. These litigations will likely require decades to adjudicate and will undoubtedly result in a great deal of wealth redistribution. We will also probably see a lot more airsoft guns on screens both large and small going forward. However, after all the accusations, recriminations, and questionable claims of innocence, Andros Hutchins still grows up without his mom. That’s obviously the real tragedy here.
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