OPINION | This article contains the author's opinion.
Investigative reports are digging up the alarming events leading up to the fatal shooting involving actor Alec Baldwin while on the movie set of “Rust.”
63-year-old Baldwin drew his gun and pointed it at the camera for a scene and fired.
The incident killed 42-year-old Halyna Hutchins, who was the director of photography, and injured 48-year-old Joel Souza, who is the film’s director. Police have launched an investigation into the incident.
Assistant director Dave Halls reportedly handed the gun to Baldwin and said that it was “cold,” indicating that it was safe to use and not loaded with live ammuniation.
Maggie Goll, who is a pyrotechnician and prop maker, has previously worked with Halls and alleges he has a history of failing to maintain a safe working environmnet.
We have also learned that the armorer on set was 24-year-old Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.
She was responsible for making sure the weapons were safe and “movie-magic ready,” Western Journal notes.
Others say she has a history of failing to follow basic firearm safety protocols.
Popular actor Nicolas Cage reportedly stormed offset during the making of “The Old Way” earlier this year.
In the span of three days, the young armorer reportedly fired a weapon twice, including an accidental discharge.
“Make an announcement, you just blew my f***ing eardrums out!” Cage blew up before leaving.
“I told the AD, ‘She needs to be let go,’” he recalled saying to the assistant director.
“After the second round, I was p***ed off,” he said. “We were moving too fast. She’s a rookie.”
During the making of this previous film, Gutierrez-Reed was accused of putting “the cast and crew in several unnecessary and dangerous situations,” according to The Wrap.
“She brought weapons and live rounds onto the set without warning and broke a cardinal safety rule by allowing firearms to be pointed at people,” the report said.
Check it out:
Updates on the #RustMovie tragedy: The armorer had reportedly upset both Nicholas Cage and other crew members on her previous film.https://t.co/Zqv7BVxfaJ
— TheWrap (@TheWrap) October 26, 2021
More from Western Journal:
Gutierrez-Reed also carried handguns under her arms, sometimes situated so they would be pointed directly at anyone behind her, and she carelessly palmed rifles that were scene-ready.
She also accidentally fired a blank while trying to test whether horses used for production would be spooked by the sound, an incident that led one of the film’s stars to storm off the set, according to The Wrap.
It was only after this incident that Brumbaugh learned it was the first film for Gutierrez-Reed, who no doubt was hired at least in part because she is the daughter of longtime Hollywood armorer Thell Reed and he is said to have trained her.
A producer for “The Old Way” denied this account of the armorer’s experience on the film, however.
“I have no such recollection of this event on our set. I asked my partners the same,” the producer told The Wrap. “The details on some of these accounts specifically when it pertains to ‘The Old Way’ have been blown out of proportion.”
Still, the mistakes and missteps she’s said to have committed may explain the tragedy on the set of “Rust,” especially in light of what the Guitierrez-Reed herself admitted just last month about working on the Cage western.
“You know, I was really nervous about it at first, and I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready,” she admitted on a podcast on Sept. 11. “But doing it, like, it went really smoothly.”
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Maybe this is just another Hollywood tale involving a temperamental movie star, but it seems plausible that safety protocols were flouted given what happened on the “Rust” set.
The fact that Baldwin had access to a firearm loaded with anything when the scene called for a “cold” gun reveals that precautions were not taken to prevent such a mixup.
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While it’s true that there’s no need to fear guns as most leftists do, a healthy respect for the destructive power of firearms is the first rule of gun safety.
Even guns that are set up to be used as movie props are to be treated at all times like the deadly weapons they are — and the only way such an accident could occur would be if that fact were ignored.