Jury finds 'Rust' armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed guilty of involuntary manslaughter

I think its more fair to put the blame on the Armourer than to blame the actor. Still 3 years in American prison is to much to put on someone with no criminal intent. She should be put on home detention or community service for 3 years.
- Baldwin was the primary producer on the film and the set conditions had had numerous safety issues up until this point including 3 other firearm misfires. There was a documented safety issue on this set and while Gutierrez-Reed was part of it, the showrunners clearly were too by not taking steps to address it before the tragedy happened.
  
  I don't disagree that he may be civilly liable for the safety conditions in general on the set. I just don't think that his role in this particular case amounts to criminal negligence. From what I have heard, he had every reason to think that his weapon was safe to handle and use. In order to be guilty of manslaughter, you have to act with gross negligence, meaning that you know the risk of harm to another due to your action is real and significant and yet you choose to do the action anyway. In this particular case, he would have reasonably believed that the risk in his actions was essentially none at all.
  The negligence was primarily on the armourer and secondarily on the guy who was meant to confirm the armourer (the assistant director? I can't recall), both of whom failed in their basic due diligence and assured the crew and cast that the firearm was safe when it was not.
  
  You should blame Alec's parents for giving birth to him. You know, because they were the ones that caused all this. Without them this wouldn't have happened. Or maybe we should blame the person that introduced their parents together?
- I agree. The entire situation is bad, and it's gone on for years. I imagine anyone would have been going through hell all this time if they had any connection to the chain of events. Time in prison is pretty harsh at this point.
  Edit. I think blaming Baldwin like they are (her lawyers) is also pretty disgusting. Which actually might have determined the harsh sentence for this lady.
  
  Baldwin is responsible as an executive producer (along with whomever else was producing). It's obvious the armourer was out of her depth and should've never been hired. Not saying she doesn't bear any responsibility, but if you as an employer cut corners to save money, and someone dies because of that, there should be consequences.
- Sentencing hasn't happened yet, three years is the maximum sentence possible.
- Actors literally get paid to point guns at each other, handle them unsafely, and click the trigger.
- Could be mistaken, but I think people were going after Baldwin for this because he was a producer? As in, he funded and hired the armourer so ultimately it was his fault.
  
  No, they're blaming him for physically pointing the gun.

If people were bored and wanted to plink cans, fine. DON’T USE THE FUCKING OFFICIAL PROP GUNS.
Several lines of responsibility got lazy on that set. The most egregious is that someone other than The Armorer had access to the guns used on set.
- I couldn't find any reference to them plinking cans onset. The version of the story I read says she got the rounds from her dad, and they were "reloaded" rounds that had originally been dummies but were made live by hand. Basically her dad's a careless armourer who mixes reloaded rounds with dummies and didn't teach his daughter to check her ammo.
  
  Ok. I heard some story from an online media site (thus not nesc accurate) of bored crew using the guns as real guns for target shooting.
  What ever. Your story sounds better? Esp. considering the outcome.

This is dumb. Learn like airlines do; only prosecute for malicious intent. In all other cases, learn. Create procedures that make this situation impossible, and make certain that all major productions follow them.
Saying it's X or Y person's fault absolves any systemic issues. What training should an armorer have? Can we avoid a single point of failure that results in live ammo on set? Etc etc.
Edit: thank you Lemmy for positive votes. The Reddit threads are absolutely bloodthirsty in comparison. Good change in pace here.
- Umm.. No. I am sorry but you are about 30 years out of date in believing this is a problem of not having enough proceedure. In the wake of the death of Brandon Lee the industry created a very comprehensive system of weapon checks and requiring all basic prop people to go through licencing and safe handling programs as part of getting their union ticket never mind armourers who require more extensive courses in handling a wide range of weaponry and experience in handling them.
  The Rust case IS one where legitimate negligence of stringent industry standard was SO endemic that there is no leg to stand on. This is criminal negligence. Unionized workers were already leaving that production for safety concerns before the incident occured.
  Here is a list of things that specifically went wrong in process for this specific incident to happen.
  The weapon was left unattended and not locked in a secure location
  the weapon was used with live ammo to shoot during the work day.
  Each round loaded into the weapon during the workday was not scrutinized to ensure it was the proper load and there were no visually acertainable defects.
  the weapon was picked up and handled by several unauthorized personnel.
  the weapon was delivered to the actor by an unauthorized person from a different department.
  The weapon was accepted by the actor from a recognizably unauthorized person
  a full check of the weapon including each loaded blank and the barrel to check for bad blanks, possible obstructions or debris that can be projected to cause injury was NOT performed at point of hand over in sight of the actor.
  An unauthorized person decreed it a cold weapon without performing even the most basic visual check of the chamber.
  Even if the gun were loaded with blanks not submiting to all of this process would leave the door open to someone getting killed on a set. Even blanks can kill. At this point the criminal negligence pie is so big that the slices that get handed out are going to hurt. Before you start calling this case "dumb" understand the industry.
  
  the weapon was used with live ammo to shoot during the work day.
  When I heard about this I had a strong feeling about what happened: people were firing the gun for fun while it wasn’t being used for the film. There would be an easy way to avoid the most remote possibility of this happening by accident: no live ammo on the set at all, period.
  
  Yes, I know the list of things that kinda-sorta-shoulda happened. That's really my point, though. How can a production big enough to star Alec Baldwin and other union actors be able to run with non-union armory and such piss poor procedures?
  We know that the whole safety procedures from top to bottom were rotten. So putting criminal blame on one person doesn't ring honest. How can we know the whole story if everyone is trying to cover their tracks to not land in prison? The people with meaningful authority on set failed, and I'm not convinced that this armorer truly had the authority to shut down production on safety grounds.
  Procedural changes might be mandating that productions need armorers who are then protected from dismissal if things get dangerous, so they can stop productions etc. But nothing will change this time, since we have found someone to blame.
- Nahh. I watched the trial, this is a clear case of criminal negligence. The set was a mess, everything was rushed, someone died. There are dozens of gun heavy sets every months accross the US, yet people dont die. The producers and the armorer are responsible for gun safety on the set, they failes, they need to be held accountable.
- I'm pretty sure there are already procedures and those include never having real guns on a set. If you do have real guns on a set (why would you ever have real guns on a set) they should be physically separated, and visually distinct.
  Of course the real solution would just be to never have real guns on a set which of course is rule one that she broke. They didn't need real guns, they had them there for no reason that's why she's guilty because she was doing a stupid thing for no good reason.
  
  There's a bunch of things that should never happen. No real guns on set. No live ammo ever near those guns. No removing guns from set. No pointing guns at people. All the procedures getting skipped when a new person holds a prop.
  By blaming a person and one element of it, we leave everything else as it was and more accidents will eventually happen. Sooner or later a studio will want a non-union armorer that they can boss around again, who won't have the authority to push back on things, and if we don't learn now then it can all repeat.
- Yo, all that shit exists and was presented in the trial. Lmao.
- I feel like a slap on the wrist would just incentivize this sort of behavior.
  
  I think what they mean is it would bring about change across the entire industry to prevent this type of thing from happening regardless of who's in charge.

I am a consequentialist, so while I don't support the current state of "reform" in the USA I still think negligence is just as punishable an offence as malice.
I think Baldwin, responsible for cutting corners resulting in loss of life, should also face prison time.
- Baldwin is old enough to remember what happened to Brandon Lee. Add several workers leaving for safety reasons and it makes Baldwin the Producer and decision taker, responsable for turning a blind eye on all the security violations.
  He was the one gambling and taking a chance, as always, for a bigger profit.
  Gutierrez-Reed was unprofessional and ignored many safety procedures and is very responsible also, and should have walked out also... but being young and on your first jobs can be demanding and difficult to say no. What a wake-up call for her.

she's got a great hairstyle here.
- I was thinking that she definitely doesn't look like what I assumed an armorer would look like
  
  The way she looks in real life before this trial is nothing like she looks during the trial now. They're trying to make her look as professional as possible

Maybe now Hollywood will stop using real guns

Why do they even use real guns? And even when they do why aren't they guns with locked/incapacitated barrels, blocked ? I am sure that they could have disabled the hammer, detached the trigger so that it did not actually fire or maybe even dont allow real guns and bullets in filming locations?
- A good armorer uses a mix of these techniques, and it usually isn't a problem there have only been 3 ~~gun injuries~~ live ammo shootings:
  -The Captive (1915). -The Crow (1994). -Rust (TBA).
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_and_television_accidents#
  
  This one too:
  Cover Up (1984). While waiting for an episode filming to resume, actor Jon-Erik Hexum played Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum loaded with a blank. The gunshot fractured his skull and caused massive cerebral hemorrhaging when bone fragments were forced through his brain. He was rushed to Beverly Hills Medical Center, where he was pronounced brain dead.>
- The actor didn't actually pull the trigger. He pulled back the hammer on the revolver manually. I guess they needed a working hammer for the scene.
  
  I remember someone saying "there is no way this firearm could have fired, it was a modern reproduction gun with modern safety features like half cock". So I went off and found the manual for that firearm and it explicitly mentioned things NOT to do, which included banging the gun, releasing the hammer etc. So regardless of modern safety features or not, even the manufacturer gave warnings that correspond to some of the statements Baldwin made about it just going off.
  That doesn't excuse sloppy firearm safety, or the use of live rounds, or the incompetence of the armorer. But like most things, an accident is not just one thing but a chain of events.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Her mother, seated behind her, put her hands on her head and bent forward as the judge ordered her remanded into custody pending sentencing.
During the prosecution's closing arguments on Wednesday, Kari T. Morrissey told the jury that Gutierrez-Reed "was negligent, she was careless, she was thoughtless."
But he said he did not realize he had been injured by a live round of ammunition, and when medical personnel informed him at the hospital, “It could not compute for me,” Souza said.
Dave Halls, who was the film’s safety coordinator and pleaded no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon last year as part of a plea deal, also took the stand.
During opening statements, special prosecutor Jason Lewis called Gutierrez-Reed’s behavior on the “Rust” set “sloppy” and “unprofessional.”
Dana Griffin and Sumiko Moots reported from Santa Fe, and Chloe Melas from New York City.
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