Tuesday, October 26, 2021

History For the Attention-Span Challenged

 


Fifty-four years ago, the US Navy nearly blew the USS Forrestal out of the water off the coast of Vietnam, at the height of the Vietnam War.

Heroic and genius-level accident investigation by Navy uncovered the fact that the entire incident started because of stray electrical energy, leaking into the weapons firing system, which caused an unintended discharge of a live rocket across the flight deck, and into fully armed A-4 Skyhawks prepped for a strike launch, carrying both full fuel tanks, and the last batch of rusted and obsolete WWII iron bombs, which resulting conflagration set off multiple rapid detonations, which decapitated the damage control crews responding, killed 134 sailors, injured and wounded 161 more, and very nearly cost the Navy its first supercarrier.

The pilot of the Phantom that launched the stray rocket, Lt. Cmdr. James Bangert, received no punishment whatsoever for the incident, despite $72 million dollars of damage to the ship, the compete loss of 21 aircraft, damage to 40 more, and the toll of dead and injured sailors, because it was manifestly obvious that it wasn't his fault, despite being the one person that flipped the switch that initiated the launch, and subsequent catastrophe. (Mirabile dictu!)

One of the Skyhawks was manned by a navy lieutenant commander named John S. McCain III, son of a full admiral (CINCUSNAVEUR), later a heroic POW, and after that, legendary massive fuck-up RINO saboteur while US senator from Arizona.

So disliked was he, that even decades after it was well-known and documented that he was nothing but a victim and unintended bystander caught right in the middle of the initial explosion and fire on Forrestal, and who barely escaped alive, people still, to this day, try to erroneously and deceitfully somehow pin the incident on McCain.

Pay no attention to how the behavior of such deranged anti-McCain moonbats exactly replicates the fervor to pin a tragic set shooting, not on the serial fuck-up incompetent weapons handler, who authored and caused the entire thing, but onto disliked and thoroughly dislikeable anti-gun fucktard Alec Baldwin.

Psychotic delusion doesn't repeat, but it sure as hell rhymes.

And to prove it, with an even deeper dive in distant history, pray let us continue.

People Who Should Know Better have thrown their brains out in order to get on the "Lynch Alec!" train.

Andrew Branca, who's been hurled at us in thread after thread like J. Noble Daggett from True Grit, assumes his case all the way to a conviction, after first handwaving away about 100 salient facts, based on a total ignorance of anything that goes on at a movie set during production, including some of the most critical facts in the whole story. If wishes were horses, he could assume himself atop a mighty steed indeed. He should know better, but as part and parcel of why we call him the jackass he is, he'd rather sell his legal soul to be the White Knight predicting criminal jeopardy for Baldwin than face any facts that show the error of his own diaper spackle theories. He truly puts the anal in analysis. Unfortunately, his jurisprudence was trumped twenty years ago, by the legal acumen of Felix Unger:


And Kurt Schlichter, with whom we frequently agree, and would love to point to this time, knows that letting Baldwin off is justice, but would rather burn down the law itself in this case, to give Baldwin the same roasting the Left regularly gives people in highly publicized show trials. Schlicter, too, should know better, but we leave it to the legal acumen of Paul Scofield, in the role of a lifetime, to explain far better than we, the utter folly of sacrificing the law just to get even:


Long time readers, whose opinions I respect, would rather not hear any more about this incident, thinking it too petty to trifle with any further. But aside from being the decider on this blog, we find that when something so petty induces people who should be of far higher character than back-and-forth on this topic has revealed them to be in fact, we're right on the money, and its exactly this sort of "trivial" incident that's highlighting how deep the rot in the culture goes, and how fragile is the civility upon our own side, that they would become so frothingly deranged over so small a thing.

We can scarce imagine what fresh hells await us one and all once things begin getting actually desperate.

Don't look to the horizon, dear friends. Your problems aren't going to come from there. Look instead to your own fences, because the biggest problems you'll face in the next decade are going to come from closer than a few miles from your own front doorstep.

All Baldwin's trials and tribulations have done is rip the scab off the problems you're going to have with so-called friends and allies, because it's never an enemy who does the damage. It's the one who calls you friend - and then stabs you in the back - who's going to sell you out for their 30 pieces of silver.

Watch your six, and don't give your trust away. Make people earn it.

45 comments:

ruralcounsel said...

"Take the high road" suicide pact. Priceless.

Walter Coast said...

I understand what you are saying but it really seems New Mexico law (and the New Mexico supreme court) feel a person who does an inherently dangerous act with an inherently dangerous object has a duty that exceeds that of faulty light switches or pilots and jets or other examples of handheld things not designed specifically for killing.

Alec Baldwin really cannot say he didn't know guns were dangerous. He has been saying that for years. Nor can he say pointing a gun at a person and pulling the trigger is not a dangerous act. He has been saying that for years too.

Actor or not, he had a duty to be sure the object designed to kill people was not able to kill people.

He failed pretty miserably.

If he knew guns can be dangerous but honestly didn't think it would be a problem, he is negligent. A good case can be made for that.

If he knew guns can be dangerous but didn't care enough to doublecheck, he is criminally negligent. A case might be able to be made for that.

New Mexico law pretty much treats all firearms deaths as a criminal offense. They are dangerous objects and must be treated as such at all times.

Don't yell at me. I don't make the rules. I am waiting to see what happens just like you.

Again, we don't have all of the facts. Did he know people were shooting real bullets in "prop guns"? Why did he point the gun at people and not the camera? Did he spend one minute to double check a gun that was handed to him with no chain of custody?

Lots of questions that will likely be answered in civil court and perhaps criminal court.

I understand your point that there are different rules for actors. Maybe that is true. Or maybe they have a duty to ensure they are following gun rules like everyone else, even when they mostly rely on others to do that for them.

I applaud Hollywood for an excellent gun safety record.

But that works against Mr. Baldwin rather than for him.

Anonymous said...

I remember the year 1967 like it just passed minutes ago. This incident, the USS Liberty clusterfuck, riot season, the "Summer of Love", the big anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon in the fall, LBJ, LSD, the movie "The Graduate", Stroh's beer, virtually all the Top 40 songs on AM radio, the first Super Bowl, Jane Mansfield's fatal auto accident in late June, the weekly Vietnam body count, hearing "sock it to me" till I actually wanted to sock it to some douchebag, shit I could go on & on, but who cares. The only thing I really want & hope for is that I die in the coming bugaloo (that was a big dance craze back in '67) rather than in some damn geezer home where I can't shit & piss without the help of a nurse's aid who speaks broken English. However, if I survive the coming festivities, there's one thing for sure. I'm going to sock it to all the assholes who are responsible for all of this shit over the past 50+ years.

Anonymous said...

"...don't give your trust away. Make people earn it."
Excellent advice.

Mike Austin said...

I don't get it. You have 20 years of experience on movie sets, yet folks still ignore that and abandon reason just to get a shot in at Baldwin. It perplexes. But perhaps human nature is arranged just so.

Right about friends and enemies. At 68 years of age, I can tell you that I have never been injured by an enemy. How could I have been? I knew who they were, I knew why they hated me, I knew how they operated. It is friends who can injure you. A man let's his friends in close, thereby giving them the ability to do real damage.

T said...

"All Baldwin's trials and tribulations have done is rip the scab off the problems you're going to have with so-called friends and allies, because it's never an enemy who dos the damage. It's the one who calls you friend and then stabs you in the back who's going to sell you out for their 30 pieces of silver.

Watch your six, and don't give your trust away. Make people earn it."


Preach it, brother. Shout it from the mountaintops.

Bear Claw Chris Lapp said...

"and after that, legendary massive fuck-up RINO saboteur while US senator from Arizona" Amen brother. I to thought it was McCains fault but I never researched it thanks for that correction. Yes, nothing would be better than dickhead and the stupid armourer bitch getting stomped but it's hollywood Jake and I could care less except for the dead girl. It has been said her husband was a big time lawyer with the firm that represents the likes of Clinton's.

millerized said...

He who controls the navy, controls the naval reports and naval history, facts be damned. Way too many witnesses account otherwise. "God intended it this way" was more believable than the 'official' story. And their 'fix' for the 'stray currents'? That's telling in and of itself.

And Baldwin, as much as he needs to go away, is innocent of everything except being an asshole. I don't understand the continued 'but gun rules rule uber alles' crowd with their complete dismissal of 'movie gun rules uber alles'. Have they not seen a movie? I'm guessing that most don't understand 'acting' vs real life. (and I've been muzzle swept by more 'gun guys' than I ever have been by actors)
Meh, let them fight it out in court. The clue bat won't help some of them, no matter how many
nails you drive through it.

Ray - SoCal said...

We are moving from a high trust society to a low trust society.

Emerald Robinson had a tweet stream that captures this about the Vax approval for kids:

You know that we live in a Big Pharma oligarchy masquerading as a republic because young men get myocarditis from the jab and that didn’t matter to the FDA.

Nobody’s gonna trust any of our institutions when this is over.
1:57 PM · Oct 26, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

https://twitter.com/EmeraldRobinson/status/1453103553455824896

Chris said...

“ If wishes were horses”
Then dreamers would fly

JB! Jon Butcher.
Did afew gigs with him. Audio.

Excellent post btw.

Enjoy-

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UcqX-e9cOSs

Survivormann99 said...

Aesop,

As for my background, I consider myself to be almost as solid a conservative as anyone who is reading this. I have never voted for a Democrat presidential candidate in my life, and I am nobody's spring chicken. Yet, I am also very aware that there are nutjobs on the right, and I believe that I am capable of sorting out the wheat and chaff on both sides of the political spectrum--at leat most of the time.

As happens so often, in your various postings over the past few days, you have shredded the opinions of morons whose views are in opposition to yours. Your selection of the clip from "Man for All Seasons" was masterful.

I don't want to be accused of fawning (so don't let my comment go to your head), but your defense of Baldwin, amidst the moronic clamor for his scalp, reminds me of John Adams. Adams was one of the most vocal supporters of the Patriot cause, yet he volunteered to defend the accused British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. Most of Boston was howling for their heads on pikes, but Adams was able to sort out the Patriot animus for the British soldiers from the actual facts of the case, a defense verdict was returned, and justice was done.

While, in general, I won't bemoan any misfortune that befalls Alec Baldwin, this rush to judgment by so many on the right is evidence that we are not rational creatures. We are merely capable of reason at times. Your critics are simply emoting, just like liberals so often do. Logic be damned, they want what they want.

Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

"... rip the scab off the problems you're going to have with so-called friends and allies, because it's never an enemy who dos the damage. It's the one who calls you friend and then stabs you in the back who's going to sell you out for their 30 pieces of silver." Amen, and amen.
Very true. Everyone here needs to burn that into their brain. "the enemy is inside the wire". Perhaps I'm wrong (I'm not) - but I am confident that any of us can identify foes, usually not difficult. But always remember that the greatest danger is from those we "almost trust"; as in 'I only trust two people, one of 'em is me, the other one is not you".
Original Grandpa

Aesop said...

@ ruralcounsel,

Et tu, Brutus?
Clinging to reality is not a suicide pact.
People have to commit a crime to be guilty. Stripping that away so as to convict anyone you want, because you don't like them, just makes the law a club, and the practitioners of the law at every level naught but double-talking thugs. Tell me again what your business is...?

Aesop said...

@Walter Coast,

What you think fails pretty miserably as well, on multiple accounts:

1) Prop guns are not "designed for killing". In fact, exactly the opposite.
So that entire line of argument, and all that proceeds from it, fails. Don't be Jackass Branca here, bullet-headed moron in deliberate ignorance of that reality. I can only show you 50,000 movies where prop guns were used, and yet NOT A SINGLE PERSON DIED.
I'll line up 100 prop guns with blank rounds and dummy rounds, and you line up 100 real ones with live rounds, and we can see which one of us has made the point by shooting at a target at 15'. Deal? Bonus, have Branca sit downrange in a chair for my portion. (I'd suggest the other, but that would be gratuitous. I just want to watch him shit his pants when his lying bullshit becomes obvious, not kill him.)

2) Examining a gun loaded with dummy rounds would have availed Baldwin nothing. He would have seen rounds crafted to look exactly like real ones, but not blanks, which was what he would have expected to see. All Branca's hand-waving about diligence and "duty to check" is ass-gas, and wouldn't have helped here, but he doesn't know fuck-all about what he's bloviating. his entire experience is real guns and real shootings in the real world. Put him in a courtroom and show him 10,000 people getting apparently shot, who were no such thing, and all his arguments about "inherently dangerous weapons" is seen for the bullshit it has been since the get-go, and he shits his pants, and slinks off the witness stand looking exactly the 5-star ignorant jackass he is. Don't ride that bus with him I beseech you.
3) The armorer was the one whose job was to load the weapon, get the weapon double-checked -NOT by the actor - and if blanks been loaded, give the actor the option of watching. (The actor is under no compulsion to do so.) Which, as noted in #2 above, would have profited him naught. The entire chain begins and ends with an incompetent armorer, who broke every rule of safe gun handling, starting with knowing the difference between live rounds and dummies, and conspicuously marking them, as well as any gun capable of holding live rounds, AND NEVER BRINGING EITHER OF THOSE LAST TWO THINGS TO THE SET, EVER, FOR ANY REASON. She, and she alone, failed that responsibility miserably, and she was the only one on the entire set authorized to or capable of preventing it, in co-operation with a reliable assistant. Baldwin was an actor rehearsing a scene with a non-gun, wherein he was to point and pull the trigger whilst pointing directly at the camera, head-on to the lens. NOT pick up an actual gun, NOT loaded (nor even capable of chambering) ACTUAL LIVE ROUNDS, and NOT to issue any projectile anywhere; his actions for that sequence were entirely correct, lacking in nothing. He was handed a gun the entire crew had been assured, by the armorer, and the 2d AD, was "cold", i.e. incapable of even making anything but clicks when operated. And on the actual filmed take, only a wad for a blank contained by a plexiglass shield was to be used, ina gun that was supposed to only be capable of chambering blanks, not live rounds. There are not "multiple" persons who failed here, there is ONE. And her name was Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. She should fry. Period. Full Stop.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
That's your culprit under New Mexico law, not Baldwin/actor, and not Baldwin/one of twelve producers.
And Branca overlooks that entire 800-pound gorilla to the peril of his reputation, and he knows it, but he's doing it anyway to pander to people not as bright.

If I hire a driver, and they drive into a crowd of people on purpose, the only thing you can get me for is civil liability. (Unless you've got me on tape telling him to drive into the crowd of people.) And depending on how much due diligence I performed before I hired you, not very damned much of even that civil liability attaches to me. Any civil liability that attaches to Reed's hiring company will probably be entirely contained by production insurance.

This is not a case of "different rules for actors". That's so much sound-bite lie-wisdom.
It's a case of different GUNS for actors. Guns that aren't guns at all.
And as I've pointed out countless times, there are different rules for doctors, who get to cut you open with a knife, and take out your organs, and face no criminal penalty!
Different rules for football players, who can crash into you and throw you to the ground, and even if you die, not get arrested for assault and battery!

Everybody knows there are different rules for a host of different situations in life, and yet they get amnesia, and lose their entire mental shit when someone beats them over the head with that reality, because "Lynch Baldwin, because reasons! Somebody get a rope!"

That's cement-headed horseshit.

Stop spreading it, and stop believing it.

Anonymous said...

It's a post-truth, post-justice world. I don't like it either, but this is where we are.

Playing by the rules while the other side ignores them is like wetting yourself wearing dark pants. It might give you a temporary feeling of warmth, but in the long run you can only lose and you wind up smelling like piss.

Aesop said...

FALSE.

In a world where telling the truth is a crime, defending the truth is a revolutionary act.

Don't be a chickenshit.
Stand for truth.

Anonymous said...

Philosophically and conceptually, I respect your position. I mean that with all sincerity.

Pragmatically, I think you may be engaging in some wishful thinking that truth still matters beyond the intimate, personal, and local. I believe that in the broader society we are too far gone. (I blame the postmodernists. And television.)

That revolutionary act you cite, defending the truth, is noble and arguably correct. It is also now likely to get you sanctioned in any number of ways, up to and including depriving you of your liberty and livelihood--and if that ain't a post-truth, post-justice world, I don't know what is. False? I disagree.

It's a funny place to be in. I try to be noble, and I have to be practical. The calculus goes something like this: am I better able to care for those who depend on me by being noble, or by being practical? It's a tightrope walk, most every day. As a long-time reader I don't recall you ever mentioning having kids. That event tends to blunt one's windmill-tilting impulses. Or should, IMHO.

In any case, keep writing what you do. You're immensely entertaining, well-informed on much, and you have perfect taste in music--i.e., the same as mine.

enn ess said...

I don't care where the finger pointing goes and who it points to nor do I give a fat rats ass about Baldwin, his past of his future.
Point is Baldwin is to blame. Why? He is the one who failed to check the weapon after it was given to him, whether loaded or unloaded and with what. If you watch someone check a weapon, and then tell you it's unloaded, how well do you trust that person?Especially if you maybe have never worked with that person before. Were they telling the truth, or were they lying? You will never know unless you check it yourself. Even if my best friend I've known for 30 years hands me a gun I check top see if it's loaded, even if I watch him check it.
So that right there defines him as owning it. He failed in the most basic of safety protocols, and how severe and what charges are filed, negligent homicide or whatever, is up to the court, not us, typically only privy to second hand info.
Which brings me to one of the greatest atrocities of modern times, the inability of modern man to "Own It" regarding any outcome of their decisions. Which comes right back to accountabilty and responsibility, which is driven by sound moral judgement.

Robert said...

And now, for something completely different: Perhaps it is supposed to signify going back in time, but the opening graphic in the Forrestal video has the Earth rotating backwards.

Aesop said...

Point is, Baldwin is not to blame for anything but appearing in a low-budget p.o.s. with poor hiring choices and a flagrantly unqualified armorer, who killed people. And he likely won't be arrested nor charged with anything, and were he to be, would walk away pissed on and pissed off, but legally unscathed. He's unlikely to owe a cent personally, in any civil suit, either. The company will, but that's fitting and just. Someone got killed at their workplace, because of the flagrant disobedience to safety protocols of one Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.

Despite how many boobs can't see that, no matter how explicitly and in what electron-microscopic level of detail - moral, legal, cinematic, and philosophical - it's explained to them, it's nonetheless still true.

I'm not responsible for genuflecting or enabling other peoples' psychoses.
But I will happily point them out as a lesson to sane people.

Aesop said...

@ Robert,
I hadn't noticed. But it was Australian, IIRC, which might explain things a bit.

Robert said...

Pretty sure the top half of Gaia spins in the same direction as the bottom half. :-)

OK, switching back to the "all Baldwin, all the time" channel aka "guilty! guilty! guilty! evidence and laws be damned!".

Nick Flandrey said...

I'm beginning to think that people really don't get it that it's acting. Make believe. They are not actually strong, funny, sexy, smart, quick on the draw, or friendly. It's evident in the millenial insistence that only gays can play gay characters, only brown people can play brown... etc. When will they insist that only a true killer can play one?

It's not a weapon. It's a weapon shaped object for an expensive game of "let's pretend". Every time, out to 7 or 8 "9"s. IE- 99.999999999% of the time. Weapon handling rules DON'T apply to the actors. Potentially dangerous object rules do, which is why the Safety Bulletins exist. Baldwin was not handling a weapon, except thru the egregious failings of the armorer and the AD, and if true, whoever ELSE was loading and shooting that prop.

Leaving aside the fact that the "four rules" or "three rules" however you state them were intended for the GUN CULTURE. People who handle and routinely mess around with lethal weapons. And Cooper had to promulgate the first one BECAUSE even people familiar with the objects they were monkey punching had difficulty telling if they were loaded or not. People unfamiliar with guns have even less chance of recognizing the state of a weapon than that. Outside of the gun culture, no one gives a flying fart about the "four rules", and only in the last couple of decades at that.

If we're going to reach into our diapers (as Aesop is wont to say) and smear what we find there around on the walls looking for blame, the GUN CULTURE is partly to blame then as well. It's the GUN CULTURE, the same people going on and on about this, that INSIST on verisimilitude in movies. They're the ones whining that there were no bullets visible in the cylinder when the villain pointed it at the good guy. They're the ones whining about CGI muzzle flashes and slides not moving when guns are 'fired.' And they are the ones insisting on accuracy, writing endless screeds about a cowboy movie that uses a gun that isn't appropriate for the time and place.

The result is handing functional morons a PROP gun with visible dummy rounds in the chamber, that by definition look EXACTLY like they are real. Or having to use blanks with enough charge to operate the slide and reload the gun, even after it's been modified with weaker springs, gas restrictions, etc. Or any of the other tricks that must be done, many of which make it much more difficult to tell the state of the gun shaped object or increase the risk of injury if something does go wrong. (or possibly that someone insists that the only way to have exactly the right gun for the character is to use one particular real gun)

The actor is there to act. The crew is there to make sure s/he can do it, and do it safely.

"It's called acting dear boy." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/31/method-acting-dustin-hoffman-meryl-streep

n

(c)2014 Richard L. Kent, Esq. (MichiganSilverback at gmail dot com) said...

But I will not comment as to his legal guilt as I am not sure.

But. "Schadenfreude Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium...."

Ken said...

That is a great post, Sir. I was born in 1967.

JaimeInTexas said...

One if my favorite movie clips and was in my mind even when I wrote that I hope Baldwin experiences the legal lotery. I still hope he Baldwin gets what he wished on others.
Most of the trees are already felled by the likes of Baldwin. He does not get to hide behind a few standing trees while throwing everyone else into the unprotected maelstrom.
The time for planting new trees will come when the felling stops. We ain't there yet and will take a while.

Aesop said...

@ Robert,
Yeah, but their seasons are backwards, and the Southern Cross points at the South Pole, so they're easily confused. ;)

Aesop said...

@Nick,

EXACTLY!
Part of the reason Baldwin (and most other actors) is such a thorough-going douche about weapons is because, for him, they've never been inherently dangerous.

The first gaping hole I'd punch in Braying Branca's recockulous legal theories is the contention that guns on a movie set are "inherently dangerous".
"Mr. Spielberg, you filmed a very realistic 20 minute Normandy Beach D-Day scene. How many rounds were fired to film that scene?"
"Fifty thousand or more a day, over several days."
"How many weapons were used?"
"Over two thousand, I think. Five hundred actually fired blanks, the rest were plastic and rubber look-alikes."
"Did anyone get hurt by weapons fire?"
"No."
"No further questions, Your Honor."
https://www.rzm.com/pvt.ryan/production/scenes/equipment.html

And then I'd bring in Michael Mann to talk about Heat, and Chad Stahelski to talk about John Wick I, II, and III, and James Cameron to talk about Terminator I and II, Aliens and Predator,, then Ridley Scott to talk about Blackhawk Down, by which point the prosecution would move for a dismissal, and Branca would have slunk home quietly in the night.

"Prosecution concedes that prop guns are not inherently dangerous, and therefore there was no reason for Mr. Baldwin, nor any other reasonable person in his position, to be worried about the weapon he was handed. As we'll be charging Ms. Gutierrez-Reed for negligently and recklessly allowing a live weapon and live ammo onto the set of a show that had no reason for either one to be present that day, unbeknownst to Mr. Baldwin, the rest of the crew at the rehearsal, or anyone else on the production, we move to dismiss the entire case against Mr. Baldwin."

And the Olivier/Hoffman "acting" story is legendary inside The Biz.

Aesop said...

@RLK,

I'm fine with piling on the epicaricacy, as I've stated from the outset. Baldwin's lifelong jackassery has earned him that, now that he's achieved an actual body count.

But I'm not okay with the bloodlust to see a legally innocent man, by all accounts, dragged through the legal system solely out of sheer orneriness.

And it springs from the same "dancing in the blood" mentality we rightfully condemn the Leftards for, every time they do it, with their yammering for more gun control bare minutes after some whacktard skips his psych meds, and goes hunting.

ruralcounsel said...

@Aesop

What you seem to fail to recognize is that there is no true law any more, and that people are being judged guilty without having committed a crime. The people controlling the judicial system are predominantly using the law as a club against the people they don't like for political reasons. People like you and me. People that won't "bend the knee" to their grand plans. Justice has been stripped away. The great road has been cut through it, and it isn't going in our direction.

You do realize what happened to Sir Thomas More, right? That is the reality you seem to have trouble accepting.



Cincinnatus said...

At the risk of inciting our host's fury, and potentially getting my own Fisk of Doom, here are the problems with a lack of culpability on Baldwin's part (based on my reading of both safety bulletins):

- BLANKS CAN KILL. TREAT ALL FIREARMS AS THOUGH THEY ARE LOADED
- Firearms include prop guns, rubber guns, plastic guns, non-guns,
flintlock guns, pistols, machine guns, rifles, and shotguns that shoot "Blank
Ammunition".
-Refrain from pointing a firearm at anyone, including yourself
-DO NOT engage in horseplay with any firearms

So, based on these INDUSTRY WIDE STANDARDS, ones that Baldwin and Co should be (and according to Aesop, would be) familiar with, how is he completely blameless in the tragedy? That the armorer SUMMARILY FUCKED UP, as has been well documented by our gracious host, is not in contention by me; however, Baldwin still pointed a firearm (granted, one he ASSUMED based on all the information available was unloaded and thus "safe") at a group of people and "jokingly" pulled the trigger to demonstrate his displeasure with another take. Had he not done so, in violation of the above points, one woman would not be dead and a second person have more holes than they were born with.

Im not arguing that he "should have checked" his gun. Nor am I demanding that more laws/stricter regulations be put in place on Hollyweird and its legion of douchewad fuckwits. All Im saying is, there were rules in place ostensibly to keep this kind of thing from happening. Both the armorer chick AND BALDWIN violated several of those rules, and someone is dead because of it. I dont see how that renders him blameless

Wayne said...

Baldwin is NOT legally innocent. The NM Supreme Court ruled in Gilliam v. State (1955)

The NM Supreme Court ruled in that decision, in relevant part that:

It could have made no difference to the trial of a charge of involuntary manslaughter as to who loaded the gun … . All that it is necessary to establish for involuntary manslaughter by the use of a loaded firearm is that a defendant had in his hands a gun which at some time had been loaded and that he handled it … without due caution and circumspection and that death resulted.

Aesop said...

@ ruralcounsel,

Granting all of that, I miss nothing that's going on, nor fail to appraise where it's headed.

Do you see the better use of your time and efforts to be the sand in the gears of such civilizational visigoths, or do you think it wiser to be the one greasing the wheels of the decline, and flinging jet fuel on the flames?

Aesop said...

@ Wayne,

"without due caution and circumspection"??
Srsly??

Prosecution: "So, Mr. Baldwin, did you do anything, anything at all, to exercise due caution and circumspection to see that no one was harmed with the instrument in your hand before the fatal shooting???"

Baldwin: " Yes, I did."

Prosecution: "Oh, really? And what was that?"

Baldwin: "I made sure that the production had hired an armorer, rather than put the whole load for everything on just a propmaster, along with all the other duties of the propmaster's job. Someone whose entire, sole job, as Armorer, was to provide the entire production the correct weapons for the show herself, ensure that none of them could harm anyone accidentally, ensure their safe functioning, hand them out and take custody of them except when they were necessary on set for rehearsal and camera work, clean and maintain them every single day, and take scrupulous regard for loading them with the proper dummy rounds, or blanks, as required, while preventing any situation where there could ever be a real gun capable of chambering live ammunition on set, and furthermore that they themselves would never bring any live ammunition on set, nor let any be loaded accidentally, and to conspicuously mark dummy rounds, blank rounds, and live rounds uniquely so that any one of them and all of them could be quickly and absolutely correctly identified by the armorer, and their designated assistant, who was to double check every weapon with the armorer every time, before handing it to myself or any other actor. That seemed to me to be a pretty specific amount of due caution and circumspection to me, based on Hollywood's 28 year history of not killing people on set utilizing the exact same system. In fact, it seems to me to be extremely foolish to depend in any way upon weapons amateurs like myself or any other actor, rather than to specifically employ a subject-matter expert on firearms and ammunition, whose job was to comply with the 79 specific rules and regulations Hollywood insists are safe practice, since decades and decades ago. That's the due caution and circumspection I employed, in this case, sir."

Prosecution: "Um...er...no further questions...witness is excused."

You'd make a great prosecutor, Wayne, ably assisted by Jackass Branca as your expert advisor on the case, if Baldwin ever has to take the stand in his own defense.
Don't quit your day job.

Aesop said...

@ Cincinnatus,
Baldwin's familiarity, or any actor's, would be minimal and incidental.
The Armorer's familiarity is her entire job function.

Your first mistake is employing hindsight, and transmorgrifying it into a requirement for clairvoyance.
1) You know Baldwin was handed an actual gun, not a prop gun, which is incapable of chambering or firing live ammunition.
Baldwin wouldn't have expected anyone with an IQ over plant life to have made such a mistake. Gutierrez-Reed nonetheless did exactly that.
2) There shouldn't have been any live rounds within a mile of that set, certainly not any in the Armorer's possession, and sure as Hell not loaded into a weapon which was brought to set to rehearse the exact scene of pointing and firing at the camera.
Gutierrez-Reed nonetheless made that multiple fucktarded cock-up too.
I've pointed out ad infinitum that she violated 31 specific regulations in just the second of two safety bulletins. There's a lot of overlap between 1 and 2, but she probably didn't do much better with the regulations in the first one.
So out of those regulations, she probably broke 50-70 of them.

Baldwin violated exactly none.

The horseshit fairytale that he "jokingly" pulled the trigger to demonstrate his displeasure with another take is pure ass-gas, and any reference to it went away within hours of the incident. You're basing your conclusions on fairytales, and should probably get up to speed on what is reported in sworn affidavits to have transpired.
a) They weren't doing "takes". Those are live camera shots.
b) Takes would have involved firing blanks. And a visual witness, if Baldwin had desired it. And a Safety Meeting. No one expected any blank firing. Not Baldwin, not the armorer, not the director, not the DP, not the medic, not anybody on the entire effing movie crew or studio lot.
c) They were rehearsing, which implies doing it over and over to get it right, with a gun loaded with dummy rounds. No one, not even Baldwin in full asshole mode, would have ever gotten raw, let alone done weapon horseplay, under those circumstances, and if he had, the entire effing crew would have gang-tackled him. if that had been the situation when the gunshot went off, he would've been cheerfully beaten to a pulp, by anyone not rendering first aid.
d) No actor is required to check a cold gun, nor even to watch it being loaded. the Armorer is, every time it leaves her possession, and immediately after it returns to it. IT'S THE ONLY REASON TO EVEN HAVE HER ON THE MOVIE TO BEGIN WITH.
e) The rehearsal in question REQUIRED him to back up, draw his pistol from a crossdraw holster, and point and fire it straight at the camera. He was doing his job, according to the script and director, not screwing off. This is a situation the Safety Bulletin expressly condones, and it's the reason they use blanks, distance, and weapons shields even for firing gorram blanks.

Nothing you said requires a monumental fisking in its own post.
You're just five days and one or two fairytales behind the facts as we know them.
It could happen to anyone not paying close attention.

(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
Things I'd like to know:
1) ANYTHING, ANYTHING AT ALL, from the culprit, Gutierre-Reed, who might as well have been at the South Pole since this incident, for all she's said since it transpired. (I expect she's lawyered up, and is waiting for her ceremonial arrest, and plea bargain, before doing her 18 months in NM state prison.)
2) To include:
a) Why did you have a functional weapon on set on your prop cart?
b) Why did you have live ammo in it?
c) Who loaded it?
d) Who double-checked it with you before you brought it to set?
e) Why did the 2nd AD fingerbang the weapon and hand it out, instead of you, whose job it was to maintain physical custody of all weapons at all times except when they're being used on camera?
f) Why was the 2nd AD yelling "COLD WEAPON" instead of you, whose job it is?
g) WhereTF were you when you weren't standing over the weapons on your cart, maintaining full custody and view of them at all times, like you were supposed to be?
h) Ignoring the glaring violations of bringing both a live weapon and live ammunition to set, WhyTF hadn't you conspicuously marked dummy rounds, blanks, and live rounds, so no one, even a gun amateur like Baldwin, or a complete and utter moron like you, could tell at a glance which ones were actually in any given weapon?
h) How much of a fucking moron are you to have violated every single principle and rule of safe weapon and ammunition handling on set, such that one would normally have to do so deliberately, in order to check so many boxes of metric fucktons of fucking up?
i) Did your parents repeatedly beat you in the head with a hammer as a child, feed you lead paint chips three meals a day, and how many bottles of alcohol per day did your mother consume while she was pregnant with you in the womb? And how drunk and stoned were you everyday on the set of what was apparently your second movie?
j) How did such a complete incompetent inexperienced jackhole likeyourself ever get hired, even on such a low-budget piece of shit movie like this, and somehow secure a job normally, even on low-budget non-union crap, reserved for someone who could find their own ass without a mirror, both hands, a map and a compass, and an anatomical diagram, which clearly you couldn't?
3) Did it ever, in your wildest dreams, transpire to you in your head that you might oughta have familiarized yourself with the contents and requirements of the Industry Wide Safety bulletins, particularly the two concerning weapons and ammunition?
a) Did you read them?
b) Did you have to look up the big words?
c) Did you decide they were optional?
d) Or did you decide to set out to specifically, by the numbers, defy and violate each and every single one of them, deliberately ad specifically, because Fuck Those Rules?
e) Or is their very existence, to this day, a complete and utter shock to you, because you didn't even imagine their very existence, and have never seen a single word therein?
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
4) What was the exact weapon used in the incident?
5) What was the type of ammunition loaded that caused the fatality?
6) Did the accident happen on the first rehearsal? Or did one or more transpire, Russian-roulette style, until the live round in amongst dummy cartridges circled its way around until fatality blossomed?
7) Did any of the other two (of three total) weapons that were brought to set by you on your armorer's prop cart also contain live rounds, or blanks, or dummies?
8) how many of them were also live weapons, rather than the required prop weapons?
9) Why do you have any live weapons on the entire movie?
10) How many prop weapons, incapable of harming anyone except in too-close proximity, did you even acquire for the production?
11) Do tic-tac-toe games with fungus or houseplants regularly kick your ass?
12) When you realized you'd been the sole and entire cause of someone getting killed, why didn't you make an immediate plea agreement with the District Attorney in return for leniency, and spare everyone else the anguish of all the suspense before your total guilt became obvious, and then make a full and complete apology to the victims and their families for you flagrant negligence?
a) as in, "How big a millennial fucktwat moron piece of shit are you?!?", and
b) Why didn't you just do the honorable thing: leave a note expressing your full responsibility and guilt, and then quietly go and kill yourself?

Joe in PNG said...

I'm also curious as to how railroading even a supermassive arse like Alec Baldwin is going to fix our Justice System? The justice system based on precedent?

Railroading an actor- even a major leftist actor- is not going to fix the broken things in our system. It's not even good revenge on a tribal payback level, and we absolutely, positively, 100% do NOT want to start down that road.

Wayne said...

@Aesop. Doubling down, tripling down, etc I've lost count of your condescension on this topic.

1. Were YOU there? Physically there, on the set near Santa Fe, when the incident occurred? No, you weren't. So YOU don't know exactly what happened.

2. In what way, other than disagreeing with you, has Andrew Branca, a nationally known expert on self-defense law, acted like a "jackass"? If your blog were more widely read, he would have a cause for a libel action against you. Unless you can give evidence as to how Mr. Branca was a "jackass"?

3. "Mr. Baldwin, before the tragic discharge which resulted in the death of Halyna Hutchins, did you PERSONALLY verify that the "prop gun" you were rehearsing with was in fact, "cold"? How did you do so? Did you physically inspect, with your own eyes, that the cylinder and barrel were empty? If you inspected it and saw what appeared to be live rounds, did you verify with the armorer, prop master, or assistant director that the rounds were actually dummy rounds?

4. It's hysterical that you are questioning the ruling of the New Mexico Supreme Court. According to you, you know more about gun law than Attorney Andrew Branca, and you know more about the law that applies to involuntary manslaughter in New Mexico than the highest court in the state does.

5. I'm not saying that ALL of the civil and criminal liability in this case attaches to Mr. Baldwin. He certainly has civil liability which stems from his role as a producer on this film. He also, as a producer, bears responsibility for hiring an apparent incompetent as the armorer. The armorer, and perhaps others, also share liability, both civil and criminal. But that does not get Alec Baldwin off the hook.

As for insurance paying out claims for wrongful death, I would not be surprised if the insurance company balks at paying due to negligence and recklessness.

As for you, you should stick to ER nursing. From your previous posts, you are good at that.

Aesop said...

1) No, Wayne, and neither were you or 400 other self-appointed internet gun safety geniuses. Unlike you or them, I only pissed away most of 20 years working on sets and shows everything from big-deal to smaller than the one of the incident in question, and I'm intimately familiar with the intricacies of how productions work, since when I was on set, I didn't have to do anything unless something like this happened. So I kept my eyes and ears open, and got a free master's level education in motion picture production, and got paid for it. And when information about this has come out, I've pieced it together in a way that makes sense. The proof of that is I got this right before the details came out, and called it right down the middle. So while I don't know exactly what happened, I've got one HELL of a lot better idea than you or twenty other people do, because I've already seen it day in and day out for decades. And you...?
2. Branca? Where shall I begin?
Branca's a jackass because he assumes everything, then backfills to illustrate his conclusions, and hasn't done, oh... even five seconds of research into anything on the topic, on something so far out of his experience it may as well have happened on Mars. He weasel-words some of that, but mainly it's an unmitigated exercise in "this is what I imagine, out of my ass, happened, and now let me tell you how I'm right".
He can file any action he wants to. Truth is an absolute defense, and when you're a jackass, you really don't want it proven in open court. I've met quiet lawyers, loud ones, and loud ones who couldn't find their asses with both hands. He strikes me as the latter. I hope his analysis for paying clients is better than what he's burped up on this case, but as I said, if Baldwin goes to trial, the one thing he should absolutely do is hire Branca to help - the prosecution.
3. That's nice. Let us know the answers to those questions if they're ever asked on the record, especially because given the monumental, serial, and flagrant cock-ups by the armorer, they're almost entirely irrelevant. As better legal minds than you or Branca have already noted, it's entirely reasonable for an employer to expect an employee to do their job, so once Gutierrez-Reed was hired, Baldwin's entire due diligence is dischargeable to her. Not least of which because industry standards and practices aren't guidelines like the Pirate's Code, they're enforceable standards of behavior. If I hire you as my bartender, and you poison my guest, I'm not responsible for their death because I didn't taste your efforts first, even if you handed it to me, and I gave it to them. And that's true no matter how much any number of people wish it wasn't.
4. I'm not questioning the ruling of the NM Supreme Court, just its applicability in this case. Nor claim to know more about gun law than Branca, but I pegged this as involuntary manslaughter three days before he stumbled over that obvious conclusion. And I know one helluva lot more about the salient facts of this case, because he's chosen to stick his fingers in his ears, and gloss over them, because they're outside any of his expertise, legal or otherwise. He knows Jack and Shit about the process in question, or the weapons in question, and evidently doesn't care to trouble himself to learn, it being easier to assume his way around all those troublesome fundamental facts of the case, and elements of any possible crime.
Which, IMHO, is a pretty sorry-ass slipshod way to go about your business if you're a firearms lawyer. But it's a great way to let people know not to bother with you, as a waste of time.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
5. Baldwin will end up minimally affected by this. Liability insurance isn't going to be able to skate on this one, which is why productions get it to begin with. The only recourse they'll have is to jack the premiums on anything this production company touches in the future, which likelihood I touched upon days ago. The companies all go away, so that won't be an issue. But whoever the line producer and UPM are may raise flags for productions including them down the road.
And Baldwin did not personally hire nor vet the armorer. That would be the UPM's business, possibly with and possibly without the advice of the propmaster on the show. Either way, that decision is three to four managerial levels below Baldwin. The UPM is in for some pointed questioning, however.

The armorer owns the liability.
She brought the illegal gun.
she brought the illegal ammo.
She loaded the illegal ammo.
She failed to maintain custody or supervision of the weapon.
All of that constitutes gross negligence, which meets the standard for criminal conduct in involuntary manslaughter.
That, and 25 other failings, demonstrated by the fact that the DP is dead, from Reed's gun, and Reed's bullet, blowing through her body and lodging in the director's shoulder, and she without the slightest explanation or excuse for why and how she fucked up her most basic responsibility, and the entire reason she was hired for the show. Unless it transpires she was in a coma, she's fucked. Royally. She is about to be shat on from a great height, her life is ruined at 24, and she'll be lucky to work as a barrista or waitress when this is over.

Now that it's come out that the 2d AD was the designated double-checker for weaponry, he's going to be in deep shit with the DGA, because he's just stepped on his dick, and for the second time in his career where on-set weapons are concerned. He's lucky if he avoids jail, civil liability as the double-checker is guaranteed, and he may also get kicked out of the industry for cause.

Baldwin, by contrast, isn't on any hook.
Baldwin was rehearsing his scene, not horseplaying. That fairytale nonsense was settled with the director's affidavit. He being shot and all pretty much kills any other theories.
Baldwin was carrying the pistol loaded and checked by the armorer, and double checked by the 2d AD, who loudly assured everyone on set that it was harmless.
Both Dipshit 1 and Dipshit 2, the on-site experts, missed the fact that it was a real gun, and that it contained live ammo.
Baldwin would have been even less likely to catch that, doubly so after two people had expressly assured one and all that it was a safe weapon. So him taking all the ammo out, and then reloading it, which happens never, nowhere on any set in history, nor ever would, for exactly the reasons painstakingly explained to anyone with an IQ above 40, not least of which because that increases the risk to everyone on set, is a moot point, whether he did it, or anything, or not.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
Sorry if that leaves a 6' party-sub shit sandwich for Branca, and any number of other people, but that's the breaks when people who don't know what they don't know start talking out of their ass.

You don't have to believe any of this; time will settle the question for you.
With all the evidence shipped off to the FBI crime lab, it may be weeks before further developments.

And BTW, I've worked almost as long on movie sets as I've worked in the ER.
Which puts me on more shows than Baldwin, and metric fuckton more movies than the armorer on this misbegotten disaster.

But I love it when I read about internet lawyers who think they understand the business and process of moviemaking better than the people who've worked in that venue as long or longer than they've practiced law, or think that the guidelines for actual deadly weapons apply to the most harmless category of not-weapons in world history. My sides hurt from laughing at that.

If and when I get something wrong in this case, I'm sure folks will be only too happy to notify me, once the dancing stops.
At this point, a week in, it's Aesop 10, Peanut gallery 0.
And now they want to hold their breath until they turn blue. Well...OK. Go on ahead with that. Let me know how it works out.

And if some wildass new development crops up, and it transpires that Baldwin secretly loaded the live round himself to kill the director he lost money with on Crown Vic two years ago, or the armorer was pissed at the DP for stealing her on-set BF, so she sabotaged the gun, grab some popcorn. Weirder things have happened on movie sets. But that's not the way to bet.

Then again, pigs might fly, too.

Joe in PNG said...

Branca is basically the Ben Crump of the gun world.

Aesop said...

He may know his stuff regarding self-defense, I dunno.

But I hope he shows a lot more professional curiosity about the facts of a case in those situations than he has with this one.