Tuesday, October 01, 2024
‘Rust’ armorer’s involuntary manslaughter conviction upheld in fatal shooting
National | Globalnews.ca: A New Mexico judge on Monday upheld an involuntary manslaughter conviction against a movie armorer in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film “Rust.”
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4 comments:
I think it’s so interesting that 3 years after the accidental on-set shooting, the story is still in the news and the courts. It’s clear that the weapon policy in films and theatre, especially when they are firing weapons, has to change. Not only were the charges for the actor dismissed by the judge, but that the armorer is looking to have her charges of involuntary manslaughter dismissed as well. In this instance I believe that someone should take some sort of blame for what happened. If we don’t hold those accountable for what happened, then how can we start to enforce policies and procedures that will help prevent this from happening again in the creative industries. Even 3 years later, there doesn’t seem to be much change in regard to how the film industry plans to make filming with weapons safer for all of the technicians, actors and artists involved. I hope that the conversation of weapons and weapon safety continues to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind in the film industry even though this shooting happened 3 years ago.
This is exactly what should happen: the armor gets charged and the actor gets acquitted by no means was this Alec Baldwin's fault; it is the responsibility of the crew to ensure safety of the entire cast and crew of a production. We are broken down into departments because that allows for a safer operation. It would be a lot to ask an electrician to also ensure that the platforms won't fall down. But if a platform breaks and someone gets hurt it is not the actors fault for the platform they were told to dance on breaks they were just performing their job. The person who is seen as liable is the Technical director or engineer. So I think in the case of a firearm which is extremely regulated on set and stage performances to even have access to live ammunition is unbelievable. To not recognize that it is live ammunition is negligence on Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s part. To not set up the shot in a way that no one is in the line of fire god forbid the gun is actually live. This is pure negligence and she deserves the consequences.
I’m relieved but not surprised to hear that the conviction was upheld. There was an article last week about Gutierrez-Reed trying to get the conviction overturned, and it just seemed stupid. It’s pretty obvious that she is largely responsible for the death of Hutchins and that she’s only trying to overturn the conviction on a technicality. The article last week said that the evidence that had been withheld by the prosecutors wasn’t relevant to Gutierrez-Reed’s case, and it did appear that way. In my opinion, 18 months seems too short a punishment for this case anyways. There were a lot of things that went wrong to let this tragedy happen, and Gutierrez-Reed should’ve been able to stop it. In this sense, it’s crazy that she tried to overturn her manslaughter conviction when it’s clear as day how responsible she is for her coworker’s death. It’s been three years since this incident, and only now is she going to get punished.
This is honestly insane insanity pure insanity. This case really goes to show just how much big names get away with. Alec baldwin got away with this basically scott free after such a similar incident because he is such a big name and has so much money. In this day and age, you would think that we would be using prop guns and bullets or add in other components with visual and digital effects. But. i guess not. It baffles me that on such high budget sets, they wouldn't have anyone focusing on the safety of the actors when real guns were present. What is even crazier is how this story had so many loopholes and layers, most likely just developed and brought to court because of their lawyers. I think it is valid to have the case reopened because it was purely an accident but then again, someone died. I feel like this is more of a management issue, especially if it has happened multiple times before. You really gotta think, who is in charge of people safety on set?
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