Dear Angus,

Maybe you'd have published some of this. Maybe you'd have thrown the "wall of text" flag.

Like you, I get electrons for free, so let's just save you the trouble and the quandary over which route to take, since apparently you apparently still want a piece of this discussion.

You accuse me of "thinking there should be an exception to personal responsibility with a firearm".

Let's nip that jackassical attempt right in the bud, shall we?

1) I haven't attempted to impute imaginary motives to you, let alone without any basis in fact, so kindly refrain from trying to do the same to me. 

2) In fact, I don't believe there should be an exception to personal responsibility with a firearm. I believe very strongly in personal responsibility.

3) What you and many others have serially failed to concede, for whatever reasons, is the Reality that on production sets, for stage, movie, TV, commercials, etc., all parties - producers, crew, actors, studios, etc., after long experience with their craft, have elected to locate the sole responsibility for all weapon safety on set with the Prop master, and/or weapons handler/armorer, as the sole best repository of expertise for that responsibility.

With a wee few decades of personally observing set operations firsthand in precisely that context, I cannot argue against their decision.

a) They've not had a fatality until last Thursday for 28+ years, over 20,000 movies, 50,000 TV shows, and countless other venues, despite making some of the most weapon-packed shoot-fests in history. And whenever I mention that incontrovertible fact, everyone suddenly finds something interesting six counties away, lest they concede the obvious reality against interest to their axe they're grinding.

b) I've also witnessed the absolute asininity of repositing any hope, whatsoever, in the idea that actors should be expected to get it right so many as one time in 10 years, where the barest requirements of safety with weapons are concerned. I have watched actors just handed hot weapons turn at the slightest provocation and muzzle sweep the entire crew. I have watched actors rehearsing lines with an empty gun walking along, while in their other non-script holding hand, they were repeatedly snapping the trigger on a revolver they were explicitly and sternly warned not to do mere seconds earlier. That's but two examples of what you're working with. Their sole job is to act, and to put any responsibility for weapons safety on their heads is to guarantee more tragedies on sets, not less.

c) Hollywood in toto agrees with that estimation, such that they've made live-fire so rare as to invoke the term unicorn as documentary, rather than hyperbole. And to require that guns on set be limited to prop guns, i.e. non-projectile-firing replicas that can, at most, fire and cycle blank rounds, and not even chamber live rounds of any kind.

d) Which last is why any suggestion that rules for actual firearms be applied unstintingly to such replica weapons that are anything but what you and I consider firearms, is but the first of several dozen errors where this entire discussion has gone into the weeds, and over the cliff.

e) The only fatality they have had, since 1993, was not by someone who followed the industry-wide standards, but rather by someone who broke damned near every single one. So since you're all up on the concept, how about you tell me, and the entire internet, how expanding the regulations and laws on using weapons in the movie industry, which apparently follows them pretty damned flawlessly already, will do Jack or Shit to force people who'll break the law into suddenly saying "Well, since you passed a law, I guess I have to obey it..." exactly like it hasn't decreased crimes and killings with guns in the outside world one single time in hundreds of years of trying that? You're a smart guy on a lot of things, so tell me how it is that  800-pound gorilla hasn't smacked you across the face yet. I'll wait. This one should be good.

f) FTR, Col. Cooper only came up with Four Rules; Hollywood currently adheres to Seventy-Nine. When last I looked, the entire entertainment industry since 1980 or earlier has had precisely three accidental firearms fatalities utilizing their rules (including the one last Thursday), while Florida, dependent on just the Four Rules, had 57 accidental gun deaths in just 2019 (which makes Florida middle-of-the-nation 25th overall) putting it at just 28½ times worse than the movie industry's 40-year death toll, but in only one average year. I could make a much better case that Hollywood should be teaching Florida how to do gun safety than you can for the argument the other way around. And I can do it for Califrutopia or Wyoming with equal mathematical precision, if you're going to demand we listen to apples-and-oranges comparisons that conflate an industry that uses "weapons" expressly designed to harm nobody with a society gleefully awash in weapons painstakingly designed to kill anyone you point them at. Concede that point, or hoist yourself on your own petard. If you put away your oranges, I'll put away my apples. Otherwise, you're going to have to take your lumps. Fair is fair.

4) That all being the case, I believe very sternly in personal responsibility with firearms. Which is why the incompetent dumbass, who rather than follow a flawless safety program, and instead who flouted, and flagrantly ignored virtually every single tenet of it, should be crucified for her role in killing one woman, and wounding another person. And I'm not speaking metaphorically.

5) I'm frankly shocked and dismayed that the pussified jurisprudence of New Mexico will have to sell the innocent life of one woman on that crew for the paltry sum of 18 months in prison, and a $5K pittance of a fine. Were I given the opportunity to make it so, the guilty party would be horsewhipped from dawn to dusk without mercy, and whatever remained would be given a fine public hanging the next day, by the neck, until dead. If you can conceive of a sterner sense of responsibility for killing someone through negligence, I've yet to hear of it.

6) What I cannot condone is trying to impute guilt to an innocent party acting in good faith, thinking that the whole point of industry-wide safety rules is that they would be followed to the letter, and then getting back-stabbed by an incompetent bimbo who followed precisely not a single one of them, with homicidal results.

7) You asked, "But why did that procedure fail on the set of "Rust?"

And you knew the answer before you asked that spring-loaded rhetorical question:

That procedure didn't "fail"; rather obviously it was never even followed.

8) Then you suggest that this was a failure of sufficiently rigorous licensure.

a) Point Of Order here, mate: You can't suggest in one breath that every jackass can do safety right, and then five seconds later suggest that "What we really need, is stricter gun laws!" I mean, at least, not unless you were going for the biggest ass-slapping guffaw in comedy history, and your idea of subtlety is dropping a house on someone.

b) You're the guy always leading the parade in saying that taking your AR-15 to the pier to go fishing is perfectly reasonable, with nary a single restriction anywhere visible even from space, but if Hollywood wants to film a shootout, they should call in the IRS, and whistle up a few feet of additonal codocils, provisos, and specifications??? Laws for thee, but not for me!" Srsly???

Let's see if this holds water: 

I've gotta tell you, you had me thinking for a paragraph or three you were serious. Now I'm going to need ibuprofen for the whiplash, and my stomach hurting from laughing so hard for so long.

But we need to focus on something important here:

Who are you, and what have you done with Angus McThag?

Thanks (no, really) for lightening the mood on this, even if it was the last thing you intended to do when you went banana-peel surfing down those three flights of stairs and did that double backflip into the glass coffee table with the wedding cake on it. That was wicked funny!

9) Word to your sooper-secret contact: as I've only pointed out, oh, half a dozen times in the last 5 days, the entire list of proper procedures for firearms and ammunition handling on set is available to anybody, free, online:

Industry-Wide Safety Bulletins

Prop Firearms is helpfully #1, and live guns and ammo is #2.

[Hint for the Thinking Impaired (i.e. Not Angus, but any number who read this): As industry-sanctioned safety rules, assented to by multiple Fortune 500 companies, and all signatory participants throughout the motion picture production industry, and in place for deacdes, these rules have the protection of state and federal labor law, and are in fact, not like Pirate's Code, merely guidelines, despite even what they say on their cover. Nor pejoitively dismissable as mere Hollywood nonsense, as certain witless wonders with law degrees have opined while knowing better. They actually have legal standing. Cooper's Four Rules, by contrast, are codified as mandatory precisely nowhere in NM state law (nor any other state's, AFAIK, but we are fully open to counter-argument with references), and while wise, and informative, have no such legal standing. They are thus, officially, no more legally authoritative, however wise and prudent they may be, than Aesop's Four Rules, or Angus' Four Rules, nor even Alec baldwin's Four Rules, in any court of law. Sorry if that's news to anyone, especially if you are an acolyte of the Holy Temple of Cooper, but that's the breaks.]

You wrote "There's proper ways to do things when playing with dangerous items. Ways that mitigate the dangers."

Yes, indeed, there are. Hence those very safety bulletins. We noticed. We've been telling you and anybody else who hasn't got their head shoved way up their ass hasn't got their fingers in their ears all about those proper ways, For days and days. Much good that it's done for the cement-heads.

10)

"At the end of the day, the person on the trigger is the one who decides that they are OK with how well the procedures have been followed and they pull the trigger, or refuse. Making them responsible for what happens in the end because they are the last go/no-go in the chain..."

Aw. And you were doing so well...

That's not how you do it. Not with nuclear weapons, and not with firearms on set. You don't wait until the hammer's cocked, the weapon is pointed, and then hope that Billy Joe Dumbfuck with the great smile and hairdo decides to drop the hammer, or suddenly thinks "Sorry, C.B., I'm just not feeling my motivation for this scene, baby..." 

Just, no.

What you do is, you plan the scene. then you get the experts you need to make it work. Then you block it out: where the camera goes, where the lights are, where the actor stops, moves, points, shoots, and what's someplace it shouldn't be, and what needs protection, or moving, or changing from concept to reality. Then you walk everyone, including the actors, through it, to rehearse it. With nothing but finger guns if necessary. you get all the permits and permissions up front, and you have everyone poised to do it, and ready to do eleventy things if anything goes wrong, while you plan eleventy-squared was to make sure nothing goes wrong. The actors have already talked through it, and walked through it, and rehearsed through it so many times before you actually do it, you aren't worried about whether he's going to pull the trigger. Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics. You're ready to do this thing at least 10-20 times, in case everything goes wrong on the first take. And even if you bottle lightning in one take, you still do it twice, for safety, in case the film gets dropped off a cliff, or the messenger's truck gets hit by a meteor. Yes, really.

I've worked on sets here we shot people. Over and over again. Where we shot live gatling guns. Where we had full-auto fire going on for 2-4 minutes, for take after take, for a dozen guys. And on and on. Big stars on big shows, nobodies on cheesier schlock than Baldwin's non-union out-of-town p.o.s., and everything in between.

Total number of dead, from firearms, in all that time? Zero, of course.

Because prop guns aren't REAL guns 99% of the time, and are inherently NOT dangerous, because they're designed and intended to NOT kill people, unlike every REAL gun you, me, and 200M other people own.

Because of those exact industry safety rules. Right up until some bimbo airhead moron ignores every single applicable rule put in place for everyone's protection, and brings a real  gun with a live round of ammunition to a set rehearsal designed and intended for nothing of the sort. 

Firearms injuries in that time that i personally saw? One.

(Blackpowder flintlock pistol, pointed well off-line with one actor, but which shot the World's Smallest powder Cinder out of the edge of the pan, 15' away, which hit the guy's lower eyelash for a fraction of a second. Five seconds with some simple saline eyewash, no damage, let alone anything permanent, back in the game a minute later. That's it. because some things are unpredictable.)

But the last person in the chain, the final go/no-go, is the prop master, Armorer, and/or their assistants, who load weapons, pass them out moments before we roll film (or electrons), and collect them within seconds of hearing "Cut! Take after take after take.

because just as wars are far too serious a matter to leave to generals, loaded weapons, even just blanks, are far too serious to leave with actors.

And actors are fine with that, because they care about their co-workers, their crewmembers, and frankly, their jobs. They have far too much other b.s. to worry about to be expected to master any and every firearm and every other prop they're handed, and it's obviously much better to insure safe weapons, properly loaded or properly empty, by having actual weapons experts check that, who can focus on their "one thing". The cameraman isn't checking the safety of the lights. The makeup artist isn't over there with a spirit level making sure the camera dolly track is on the level. the director isn't checking that the grips strapped the camera down securely to the hood of the picture car.

The director directs. The camera operators operate the camera. The sound guys do sound. the lighting guys run the cables, plug in the lights, tur them on and off, and point them where the gaffer and the DP want them pointed. The makeup people do makeup, the wardrobe people do wardrobe, and the armorers worry about the weapons. All so the actors can just act.

Just like it works at hundreds of companies, factories, businesses, and jobs all over the planet, 247/365/forever.

Because everything isn't everybody's job.

Not even gun safety.

That's why there are rules at ammunition companies, and firearms companies, and ranges, and when hunting, and when shooting, and they all have some liability if they aren't followed, which is why every bullet that flies and every firearms accident, is not always, 100%, no exceptions, the fault of the guy with the gun last.

Don't believe me, ask 500,000 trial lawyers. Everybody knows this, but they want to pretend it's different, because "Lynch Baldwin! Get a rope!"

Their job is their job.

And that demands the utmost dedication and responsibility there is.

And an actor who "doesn't care about safety"? They'll get dropped - off a cliff. (Maybe only enough to get them to soil their shorts, but the message will be delivered, and received.) Sandbags or lights will fall on their heads. (Ask Mike Meyeres how many sound takes he needed on his next movie after he made the crack on worldwide TV "And the Oscar for Best Sound goes to...WHO CARES?! yuk yuk" Inside word was it took about 40 takes to get scenes in the can, instead of 2-3. Until he apologized. Profusely. After the producers offered him the option of unemployment. Hollywood is the world HQ of "Fuck me? No, fuck you!") So you work safe, or they'll snatch that gun out of your hand in the middle of the take, and walk the whole weapons cart back to the prop truck until you pull your head out of your ass. And they'll tell the producer to either straighten you out, or fire you, or else they'll just go home with all the weapons props, and bone the company out of $500K/day. Been there, seen that, got the t-shirt.

See if you can guess who gets stuck with that bill before they get another check from the producers.

The system isn't broken.

There was one flagrant fuck-up in this incident. She's going to prison (for not nearly long enough, but that's NM's fault) and she'll literally never work in The Biz again, daddy being a legacy notwithstanding. With a felony record.

She really should be horsewhipped.

But Alec Baldwin having anything to be blamed for, for her dozens and dozens of cock-ups on that single day alone?

Yeah, as if. It should never happen, unless we're in Bizarro Opposite World.

That's not giving him (or anyone else) a "free pass".

It's keeping the experts responsible for their expertise, rather than having amateurs fingerbang the whole machinery, and getting busloads of people, instead of single digits, killed or injured, because no one is ever going to be good at everything, or good enough at multiple things. Hell, if you're really lucky, actors are good at acting. Out of 160,000 SAG members, you'd be hard-pressed even to find a few hundred of those.

But I only worked in the industry in question for a couple of decades, and you for not a minute, and the weapons expertise you bring to the table has no bearing on "weapons" and situations designed to only appear to hurt people, while actually being rather stringently required not to hurt anyone, because we need that guy tomorrow for his big scene. And, oh yeah, that would be a felony.

I can push cardiac drugs safely, which you can't, and you can change transmissions, which I wouldn't know the first thing about even starting, let alone safely or properly. We all have different skillsets.

And all that's why people who think they've got a handle on this simply don't know how much they don't know. And should probably be content to let the dancing monkey dance.

Think about it: How do you feel when you hear Alec Baldwin tell anyone how the Second Amendment should work?

And now you think you should be telling him how motion picture production and safety should work?