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Impressive-Potato t1_jegcvu5 wrote

Reply to comment by Hooterdear in 'Rust' first assistant director David Halls sentenced in deadly on-set shooting by AudibleNod

She wasn't brought on the set because they said she wasn't needed. The AD took the gun and handed it to baldwin. The AD runs the set and didn't bring her on set. He's responsible for this.

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reddragon105 t1_jegqkds wrote

Yep, he decided to go ahead with an unscheduled rehearsal of a scene that involved a firearm without calling in the armorer, who was working elsewhere on set in her second role as props assistant at the time. He wasn't in any position to handle the gun, declare it "cold" or check it for safety - and he should have know that considering he's got credits going back almost 30 years.

A lot of other things went wrong - like the decision to only hire a part time armorer for a western movie, the line producer downplaying the priority of gun safety, and however live ammunition got in the gun (crew playing around with it? Ammo mixed up in the boxes?) - but the AD is definitely negligent for declaring the gun cold without calling in the armorer.

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Impressive-Potato t1_jegqrsm wrote

Exactly. People saying "she was on set at the time!" No she wasn't. She was somewhere else because it was a rehearsal with no firearms. The AD took the gun.

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Hooterdear t1_jegk0cl wrote

Both, the prop master, Sarah Zachary and armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed were on set when it happened.

https://abc7.com/rust-movie-set-shooting-new-details-prop-master/11910857/

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reddragon105 t1_jegovp9 wrote

But not present during the scene. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was hired as both armorer and props assistant, and days before the shooting a line producer had told her off for dedicating too much time to weapons safety and not enough to assisting the props master. She pushed back, complaining about the lax gun safety on set, but was overruled. So on the day of the shooting she was elsewhere, assisting the props master, as she'd been told to.

Then the AD decided to go ahead with an unscheduled rehearsal that involved a gun without calling for the armorer. He took the weapon, declared it cold himself, and handed it to Baldwin - none of which he should have done, and he should have known that. So he's definitely negligent in that sense but obviously a bunch of things went wrong leading up to this - not least bad management. I mean who hires a part time armorer on a western?

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Relevant_Quantity_49 t1_jeh0vnx wrote

Lax gun safety like she's alleged to have demonstrated while working on The Old Way?

>While working as an armorer on “The Old Way,” a Nicolas Cage western shot in Montana, Gutierrez Reed sent Kenney a text message on Aug. 15 in which she asked the weapons provider if she could “shoot hot rounds out of the trap door,” the report stated. > >“Wtf is a hot round?” Kenney asked in response, to which Gutierrez Reed replied, “Like a pretty big load of actual ammunition,” according to the report. > >The report states that Kenney “tells her never to shoot live ammo out of tv/movie guns, and to only use blanks” and follows up by saying, “It’s a serious mistake, always ends in tears.” > >“Good to know, I’m still gonna shoot mine tho,” Gutierrez Reed responded, according to the report.

That's just the most eyebrow-raising behavior. She was also apparently just a general disaster as an armorer.

It was fucking stupid to hire a part-time armorer for a Western, but there's no reason to believe Gutierrez-Reed was a paragon of gun safety. Armorer on two sets with gun safety issues is pretty damning.

Whether the involuntary manslaughter charges are appropriate or not is a matter for the court to decide. Either way, her career in Hollywood should probably be over.

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VeteranSergeant t1_jegg277 wrote

What difference would she have made? She handed him a gun she said was loaded only with inert rounds, but instead had live ammunition in it. It wasn't part of his role in the chain of custody to inspect the ammunition. Regardless of any safety violations by Baldwin or the AD, she negligently loaded a prop weapon with live ammunition, something that should never have happened. She failed to inspect the ammunition while it was in storage, then failed to inspect the ammunition a second time when she loaded the weapon.

Trying to blame the AD for the lion's share of the responsibility when his only interaction with the weapon was to take it from the armorer in a declared "cold" state and hand it to Baldwin is ridiculous. He's getting punished accordingly. He should have done more to prevent an accident, but the accident is not a direct result of anything he did.

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reddragon105 t1_jegobuo wrote

No, the AD didn't take the gun from the armorer - he picked it up, declared it cold himself, and handed it to Baldwin. None of which he was supposed to do in his capacity as AD. That's how he was negligent.

The armorer wasn't present at the time - she was on set somewhere, but not told they were about to use a weapon as it was an unscheduled rehearsal. The AD decided to proceed without the necessary supervision.

And the armorer wasn't even working as armorer at the time - she was hired for two jobs: armorer and props assistant, and days before the shooting a line producer had told her off for dedicating too much time to weapons safety and not enough to assisting the props master. She pushed back, complaining about the lax gun safety on set, but was overruled. So on the day of the shooting she was elsewhere, assisting the props master, as she'd been told to.

The whole thing is a clusterfuck of bad management and complacency, but at the end of the day the AD should have known better than to use a weapon in a scene that had not been checked by the professional person whose responsibility it was to check it.

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