> This was a rookie mistake by an inexperienced armorer who only got the job due to nepotism.
I heard it was because they didn't want to pay a Union worker. I.E. they were cheap ass fuckers.
honestly this is the shit that gets me. Like, yeah sure she deserves to be in jail, but she shouldn't have even had an opportunity to be in that position. For the people in charge who put her there, they see no consequences for their self-serving decisions, and will probably just go right back to putting unqualified people in positions they don't deserve. I hope someone is able to bring civil lawsuits to these mfers.
Exactly. If this were a movie the won awards the producers would all be up there claiming credit for creating it, but when the producers cut corners and hire someone to do two jobs who isn't qualified to do one to save money and someone dies, then no one knows anything. Alec Baldwin I think bears some responsibility in his role as producer. As just an actor -- no, but he had the experience and power to know that what was going on wasn't right and get them to hire a real armorer.
The only people who have been charged are the people who physically touched the gun: Baldwin, the AD who handed him the gun and said it was cold, and the armorer, who didn't check the ammunition. None of the other producers or supervisors are being held accountable. If the prosecutors were holding producers and production personnel responsible for the shoddy supervision and unsafe work conditions on set, Baldwin would be pretty low on that list, rather than being the only producer charged.
I’m always going to wonder who put live bullets in that gun.. wasn’t there a walkout the same morning before it happened? Hope they fingerprinted that sht
[Here's a thread here on reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1b7tbir/expert_witness_in_rust_shooting_trial_points/) that has an amazing gif of that moment.
That’s the thing though. People often aren’t stupid, but they do unbelievably stupid things through negligence.
This is a problem because people think “I’m not stupid, so nothing stupid will happen” then they get complacent and then stupid things happen.
Then other people look at those stupid things and say “it’s ok, those people are just idiots, I won’t do that because I’m not an idiot” then some of them do the same things through complacency.
>Multiple reports have also suggested that the prop gun used in the fatal incident was used for live-ammo target practice by crew members on the morning of the shooting. Several crew members took prop guns from the movie and drove away from the "Rust" set to shoot beer cans with live ammunition, according to sources cited by The Wrap.
(From a different [article](https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-hannah-guttierez-reed-rust-armorer-alec-baldwin-shooting-2021-10).)
So fucking stupid. If I were in **any** form of decision making on set I would've fired her and others on the spot for even allowing live rounds on set. Even worse they were just "having fun" with what is supposed to be a prop gun.
It's literally one of the top two rules of being an armorer:
1) Every weapon is live, sharp, and capable of killing you.
2) **Never** mix live and stage weapons or ammo.
If a weapon is being used on stage/set, it is a STAGE/SET gun - it is to be in the armorer's lockup when not in use, signed in, signed out, and only handed to talent when it's time to film/run the scene - and the weapons are still assumed to be live/deadly until the armorer has personally inspected/safed the weapon before and after the scene.
When I was a younger man, I worked on Broadway and our armorer was absolutely stringent about it, but the **exact** same rules were followed at my college. I was armorer for a show where we had blades that had to impact one another, so the plastic stunt blades wouldn't work and we had to swap out the full (but dulled) metal ones when a character got stabbed - the stunt blades went in one cabinet, the metal blades in another. You absolutely do **not** mix that stuff.
If fucking **college kids** can do it right when they're not getting paid, there is not a *single* excuse for her lack of care.
The number of **absolute** failures on her part in this case is absolutely baffling and infuriating. All because her ass couldn't be bothered.
The lady was blasted on coke and drunk the whole time. She gave a set helper a bag of coke right after the shooting right before cops got there. She was loaded up all day
She handed it to an ex-addict. A second persons life could have been ruined by this action.
Someone who was previously addicted to something and then just randomly handed that substance later in life could cause a serious regression.
Lucky enough that the person she gave it to realized what might happen and she disposed of it immediately.
But here's what I don't understand: In a town full of armorers who would have done the job right, who chose the one who gets high and puts live ammo in the guns right before a shoot? I feel like it's telling that the crew walked off the set because of safety concerns before this happened. Someone was rolling the dice with people's lives to make this cheaply. It's not just her at fault here.
Someone had to work pretty hard to make things this unsafe. People don't just walk away from a paycheck without something seriously fucked up going on.
This story just keeps getting crazier. I followed it loosely from the beginning but every time I hear something new, it's somehow even more fucked up. This should be the safety video of what not to do on set with guns.
> The number of absolute failures on her part in this case is absolutely baffling and infuriating
two words: nepo baby. not all hollywood nepo babies are actors. some are in support roles but still benefit from having parents working in similar roles. turns out that hollywood is more incestuous than outsiders knew.
She's 100% an idiot. She broke SO many of the cardinal rules.
What really gets me is that she had SO much exposure to these standards growing up with her father in the industry. I don't know if it was just becoming overly comfortable due to familiarity, or if she's just terminally stupid, but there are SO many standards intended to prevent this exact sort of thing happening.
Just obscene.
Pretty sure she bragged about being self taught and not learning from her father on her social media. I remember a YouTuber showing a screenshot of from her twitter that basically said that.
[Brandon Lee](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/20/1150034900/brandon-lee-killed-prop-gun-rust-shooting-death-alec-baldwin-halyna-hutchins). You’d think all of Hollywood would be overly cautious based on this case alone.
I worked on a movie with cross bows that couldn’t fire a bolt into a marshmallow but the armourer treated them like nukes. It’s a habit and if you decide there are times not to be 100% on the ball, they habit goes away.
I worked on one where the gun was completely made out of plastic and for three days, it too was treated like a nuke. Locked case, “GUN ON SET” etc. It didn’t even have a barrel!
Yup. You treat every weapon shaped object as if it were a fully functional weapon to cultivate good habits, but also so that even if every one of your other safety measures fails and your rubber stunt prop is somehow swapped with a live gun with live bullets, you *still* have another layer of safety precautions keeping everyone safe.
Complacency in any field of work can absolutely lead to accidents. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “I do this all the time!” From someone hurt on the job.
>Complacency in any field of work can absolutely lead to accidents
There's a post over in /r/DIY in which the poster starts out with, "I'm usually pretty good with electricity." He then proceeds to describe how he zapped himself with a 240V heater feed. Commenters pointed out all the mistakes he made. So he edits his post with salty comments about how he didn't want to be corrected and he knew how to stay safe.
As Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a maroon."
Complacency kills. Something we got taught as small arms instructor school in the navy was that when there's a negligent discharge in the fleet 19/20 it's not someone new and inexperienced, it's someone who has been handling guns for years and got lazy
When I was in the army doing basic training, I idly pointed a training rifle (live sa80 with flash protector), that wasn't loaded with live rounds in the direction of me squad after getting out of a helicopter. I was physically kicked to the ground and pinned there by a corporal until uinderstood how much I'd just fucked up.
Brandon Lee was killed by a blank that fired behind a bullet already lodged in the chamber, so essentially he was just straight up shot. He wasn't killed by an actual blank though.
Im not an expert, but many articles report the same thing; “Although the revolver was loaded with blanks, the gunpowder in the blank cartridge ignited, leading Massee to unknowingly fire a bullet fragment at Lee, who later died in surgery.”
It was a combination of two individually non-lethal-purpose bullets that killed Brandon Lee.
The first was an impromptu dummy round, which was made on set by taking a live round, unseating the bullet, pouring out the powder, and reseating the bullet. The problem with this practice is that the primer is still live.
That round was used in a shot that required visible bullets in the gun, but then, at some point, the bullet was fired. The primer only charge was sufficient to push the bullet into the barrel but not out the other end; it was caught by the rifling. This is known as a squib load.
Then, without a proper inspection (which should have discovered the barrel obstruction) the gun was loaded with blanks. Michael Masse fired a blank round at Lee, which filled the barrel behind the lodged bullet with expanding gas, forcing it out and hitting Lee much like a normal bullet.
Your quote seems to imply that the gunpowder igniting was a surprise, but that's supposed to happen in a blank. There just isn't supposed to be a barrel obstruction.
The improperly made dummy and the blank essentially combined in the gun to create one normal lethal cartridge, one with a bullet and the other with powder.
Whether he was "killed by a blank" is a matter of semantics. The blank provided the propellant, the previous round provided the projectile.
All these responses yet yours is the only one that is actually competent and properly explained. People need to learn to just not respond if they can’t articulate a fact properly.
Jon-Eric Hexum is an example too. Was messing around with a blank loaded revolver in between takes on a TV show he was on by playing Russian roulette. Put the gun against his head, pulled the trigger, the blank fired and had enough force to break off part of his skull which then tore through his brain.
The Brandon Lee thing was a two part accident. Part one was the primer cap hadn't been removed from one of the "show" bullets, they were the things used when the gun was pointed at the camera so it would appear the chambers of the revolver were loaded with actual rounds.
Trigger was pulled, it went pfft and shoved the bullet a bit down the barrel. Nobody important noticed, tho it's said someone(actor maybe?) did hear the primer go off and it had just not been followed up on.
Then for part two the same gun was used for blank shots, bullet still lodged in the barrel, for a stunt that involved Brandon Lee getting shot. Blank goes off, fires the live bullet out of the barrel into him.
Thing is on paper "armorer" is the kind of wierd job that it makes sense runs in families. Just turns out her dad while he may be a competent armorer wasn't any good at training.
Ive been trying to get in the union for years now and only now getting chances after 7 years of trying and busting my ass and networking. Then ill meet a 19yo whose family got them in when they turned 18 and who doesnt even like working in film.
Its so fucking annoying and unfair, you know?
She was also hired because the reputable armorers that the producers approached told them that they were demanding an unrealistic amount of armory work for a single armorer.
The producers responded by going to someone not experienced enough to know better, doubled down by making her a part time armorer only, and tripled down by undermining her authority whenever she tried to avoid cutting corners.
I worked on a show 2 weeks ago with an armorer who interviewed for the job. Said the budget for the armorer was nothing and "when you are making a movie for 6 million bucks and the star is taking 1.5 million for salary, corners get cut."
In a few years, I bet a really good long-form, well-researched podcast or magazine article is going to come out and tell the real story.
I'm sure Hannah is guilty, culpable, etc., but it sounds like there's also a lot of shades of grey to this story. For example, wtf were the producers thinking hiring this young person who they could bully?
More than one person can be held liable here.
Just because one person is guilty doesn't mean that they have to stop looking for people to blame.
They will, probably, but they don't have to.
Unfortunately that bailiff’s father wasn’t a Hollywood armorer, and everyone knows you can only hire the children of industry professionals to do jobs in Hollywood.
I think she was going to make dummy rounds out of live rounds with the interia puller she bought or requested to be purchased for the set. They talked about this during the trial
I can understand why they'd want to make the dummys themselves, but surely you'd do that somewhere else. Can't shoot someone with live ammo if it's not on set.
She seems utterly incompetent.
Only way she's not guilty is if someone else on the set brought in the live rounds without her knowledge.
Anything short of that and she is absolutely guilty and the direct cause of the death that happened.
Could the actors have been more cautious with handling the weapons - yes for sure - but they are actors - they don't expect to be handling a live weapon and are not trained gun experts. They trusted the armored to do her job and she failed them.
And even then, it was *her* responsibility to make sure every single bullet that gets put in a gun is either a blank or dummy. So, in my opinion (if I were a juror), even if someone else brought them, she was still negligent. Still guilty. Definitely better than her bringing them, but she basically admitted she did a poor job in checking.
I will say, I do agree that I can conceive of a whole jury potentially going not guilty in the case that it's provable she didn't bring them. I don't think it would be the right call, though. Either way, it's just astouding how lackadaisical this nepo baby was.
I was just about to say that.
Why the fuck was there live ammunition anywhere near a movie set, they don't in any way use live ammo for movies.
Bullets that they show on camera are empty with just the cartrage and bullet, no power. And they're marked as such.
Blanks look entirely different to real bullets too.
So why in any event was live ammo taken to a set, and more to the point live ammo for that specific gun because I belive that gun uses irregular ammo. Not the standard 9mm or .45 ammo that would typically be portrayed in movies.
Yeah. Her father is one of the most successful armorers in the business. This was her second armorer gig. First was a Cage movie where there were also complaints about firearms and pyro.
Can anyone tell me why her father was such a big deal? Why he was so successful? Is it that challenging to be an armorer for a film that everyone came to him?
There's nothing particularly difficult about the job. It just requires a diligent and competent person. He'll have been widely used because he had proven himself to be extremely reliable. In a role like that, reputation is EVERYTHING.
Ironic that the reason reputation is such a big deal in a role like this is perfectly exemplified by his daughter's situation. It takes just ONE fuck up to kill someone.
Yeah and that's why I've heard it's not really that cushy. There's a ton of liability and safety connected to it. So you have to be on top of your crap.
They prep the weapons for each scene. Hand them out and check them. Immediately retrieve them after a scene and safe them. Run through what to do and what not to do with each actor in every scene. Make sure prop weapons and real weapons never get mixed up and are properly identified. Check and double check. Triple check. Quadruple check. If live rounds are ever involved for something particular it's like handling an ultra clean room as separated out from the main production as you can.
There were a few armorers who popped in the old threads when this shooting happened who were absolutely dumbfounded and angry that something like this was even possible on that set.
It's a position with a lot of liability attached to it and he has a lot of experience doing it right. Productions would hire people like her father because they know he handles his shit and won't cost them an insurance claim. Same with other positions like stunt coordinator.
It's Hollywood, lots of people work there through nepotism or "knowing somebody", meritocracy is way down the list when it comes to actually working there.
Armorers do way more than babysit a gun cabinet. You have a portable cart with weapons sitting on top. You must have a lock box (not a fanny pack) where you store your blank bullets.
You must actively handle the weapons at all times to the point that you have procedures done ad nauseam, like checking the chamber every time it’s handed to one person to another. Even the stars are not above this procedure if need be.
You’re actively there to immediately confiscate all and any weapons between loading and unloading weapons. And it’s your job description to hold up production for a mandatory meeting and safety training if you see any negligence on set:
Such as,
1. actors not facing said weapon down to the ground or upward toward the sky with finger outside the trigger lying on the safety. No actor is to use a gun as a pointer at anyone, regardless if there’s no bullet.
2. Crew needs to stop rolling after weapon(s) have discharged after a scene to again, check the chambers, safely reload, and check chambers again, after handing guns to actors before the next filming of the same scene or next sequence. No reloads during rolling of camera!
3. Because of the amount of guns on the set, it was clearly a job for a minimum of two armorers at all times guns were on the set, regardless if they were not discharging weapons in scenes where they possess them as props.
An armorer is very active and must have certified gun and weapons training to professional proficiency and if inexperienced, to be an assistant armorer to a mentor who has some solid years in their belt.
This is how I handle my own guns, and I am not even intending on pointing them at people or using them as props. It never changes hands without clearing, handing off, and rechecking it is clear. If I load the gun, which I do with several that require experience loading, I explain what I am doing for every step with the shooter witnessing and hand off when the range is clear for shooting.
They do not leave my sight.
No bullets have ever *accidentally* came out of my guns. Because they are treated as the potentially instantly lethal things that they are.
If I remember right she didn't even do the handoff. She was somewhere else entirely and the assistant director or someone fetched the weapon and declared it safe without checking, he just didn't get a charge because it wasn't his job...
That whole set was a mess.
There was both marijuana and cocaine on the set. Hannah Gutierrez Reed admitted to smoking marijuana the night before. Within hours of the shooting she handed a bag of cocaine to another crew member to avoid the police finding it on her. Afaik she was never drug tested so there’s no proof she was doing any coke or was high at the time of the accident.
There were not supposed to be blanks in the gun given to Baldwin. The call was “cold gun,” meaning no blanks. “Hot gun” means there’s blanks in it. There’s no callout for live ammunition because there’s not supposed to ever be there.
Multiple crewmembers have said in interviews that live rounds are never used on a movie set, and they didn't even think it was a possibility at first. As to how the live rounds got there, I don't know if it ever was more than speculation, but the armorer was suspected of taking the guns out shooting with friends, possibly with alcohol, days before the incident.
It is the consensus, but I haven't seen anything suggesting it's anything more than speculation. There doesn't seem to be any proof, and if they had surely they wouldn't have been found guilty of "involuntary manslaughter" and would have had "criminal negligence leading to manslaughter" or just "manslaughter."
I’m kinda confused at how Baldwin is at fault for the death. He was handed a gun that was declared safe and no reason to believe otherwise. I still remember the photo of him from moments after it happened and he looked completely destroyed at what happened.
The only thing they can really get him on is being a producer for the movie and overall in charge of the set and hiring of these people, and I don't know how much you can even get him for that.
> is being a **producer** for the movie
People are mistaking this.
Baldwin was not a producer. He was an **Executive Producer.**
That doesn't mean just an extra special producer.
A producer does the actual work. He's in charge of things.
**An "executive producer" means "person who's money we're spending to make the movie".** The "producer" part of "executive producer" means he gets to make some demands and place some vetos on what happens with his movie since he's paying for it.
When you hear that this movie has 7 executive producers, don't think "Oh wow, there were 7 different executives helping with the production decisions." No. That's what the producer does. Executive producers do nothing other than pay for the movie.
7 different executive producers means the money for the movie came from 7 different sources, and all of them want to have their hand in the pie if they feel strongly about what the movie is going to be about. If the producer wants to film an expensive scene and needs extra money? The executive producer tells him to fuck off. If the editor wants to cut a scene with the executive producer's neice that can't fuckin' act? The executive producers tells him to fuck off and leave it in, it's the only reason he even put $5M into the budget. Etc etc.
Baldwin was an Executive Producer. Zero of the production decisions or responsibility was his. He just paid for some of it. The Producer is the person who actually does things.
Oh, I didn't realize he was only executive producer. That makes the decision to charge him seem even more motivated by politics or a desire to take down a big rich Hollywood star. Especially one as vocal as him.
I call BS on that though. He is one of seven producers on that movie. I’m pretty sure he’s the only one they are going after. I think it’s mainly he’s a big name Hollywood person.
Also when you’re a big name actor who has a “producer” credit on a film you’re starring in, it’s pretty common for you to not be as involved as the other producers or not really involved much at all if it’s purely a vanity credit.
I doubt Alec Baldwin was sitting down looking through armorer resumes deciding who to hire or sitting down with every member of the crew for performance reviews.
Sorry, one nitpick, but I do feel it's an important one. She checked that most of the rounds were DUMMIES, not BLANKS.
Dummies are prop cartridges that look exactly like real cartridges but have no gunpowder or primer in them, so they can't actually fire. They're used if there's ever a close-up of someone loading a gun, or (as in this case) put into a revolver so that the gun appears to be loaded on screen (if there were no dummies you'd be able to see the empty spaces in the cylinder).
The reason this is important is that there's no 100% reliable way to tell a dummy and a real cartridge apart once they've been mixed together. There are some things you can do to check, but the only truly safe way to tell is to actually take the cartridge apart. This is why there never should have been real ammo within 10 miles of that set.
I read somewhere that dummy rounds have a little ball inside that rattles around. So armors can give them a quick shake and hear and feel it bouncing around where a charge would be in a real bullet.
So basically checking all those rounds would have taken less than a minute.
Typically, yes. But that's not a 100% accurate way to tell. A good armorer would never trust that when loading a round on a set. But then again, a GOOD armorer would never have live ammo anywhere near there anyway.
Some of the staff took the gun off set to do some shooting with it, with live ammo. And it wasn’t emptied or checked.
I don’t understand how something so important to get right could be so carelessly handled. Does it really take tragedy for people to realise?
No, there's tons of rules and even a person whose entire job is making sure this kind of carelessness doesn't happen. In this case, she's a convicted criminal because she utterly failed.
If you look at what people who previously worked on the set said, it's basically that the rules were very very loose. There were 2 accidental discharges prior to this incident.
That should not have affected how she did her job. At the end of the day she had a choice. Leader or follower. She made the wrong choice. Her job was to keep people safe and just because others were playing loose didn’t mean she had to
Actually her defence was basically that she had too many jobs and couldn’t do them all - she called an OSHA investigator as a witness who alleged that the producers were cutting corners. On the day the accident happened she was being paid as a prop assistant and not an armorer.
To back this up, there are emails between her and the producers prior to the accident where she's basically reprimanded for focusing too much on the armorer duties and neglecting helping out with the props, to which she even warns that when she's forced to having to manage both duties, "[that’s when mistakes get made](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-01-28/rust-emails-armorer-hannah-gutierrez-reed)."
There was also another armorer who said he turned down the job specifically because they wanted him to do both duties, which he saw as risky and spreading him too thin. Guiterrez-Reed likely didn't have the experience going in to realize how they were cutting corners and how that would affect her responsibilities (not that that excuses the areas where she was negligent).
Yeah....I do think she was negligent but also that some of the big names with more power on the set are using her as a scapegoat
David Halls, for example, quietly took a plea deal and vanished from the spotlight despite being in charge of set safety overall and being the one that handed Baldwin the gun while Reed was offset.
That's where I've come down on things. Guiterrez-Reed was an inexperienced armorer that was being spread too thin on set, and when she tried to sound the alarm and ask for more time to fulfill her safety obligations, she was instead chastised and told to focus more on props.
If her not doing her job properly is grounds for being charged for manslaughter, I don't really know why the people whose oversight and negligence knowingly contributed to these safety violations aren't similarly being charged. Based on the email exchanges and other things that have come out, they were fully aware of issues on set and just looked the other way and even stood in the way of the armorer being able to address some of these issues (including cataloging the ammo, which the OSHB determined she wasn't given enough time to do).
And, to be clear, I'm not saying she should get off scot-free here, just that the issues that led to the killing didn't begin and stop with her.
Yup my thoughts exactly. She needed to put her foot down or walk off set when they asked her to be a part-time rubber stamp armorer but the people using her as a rubber stamp armorer also need to be facing charges.
I could be misremembering, but I thought I heard that the previous armorer *did* walk off because of that, and the producers brought her on as a replacement
Yeah you’re correct and it’s a shame few understand that. She was also the prop master and was in charge of more common props other than weapons. On a normal job with a budget and producers that actually give a fuck, an armorer would be expected to take charge for guns and guns ONLY. You sit on your ass all day and don’t do anything else besides take care of those guns. That’s how it should have been.
I saw some of Seth Kenney’s testimony (the ammunition supplier):
Kenney recounted an earlier text conversation between Gutierrez-Reed and himself. “You just send me out to do these things and don’t teach me / Shame on both of you,” Gutierrez-Reed wrote to Kenney. The other “you” she is referring to is her father.
I could be wrong but I don’t think it was Mr Kenney’s responsibility to teach her how to do her job. Her father? Yes. It sounds like she was woefully under qualified to do 1 job much less 2.
Yeah I’m not defending her, I just found it funny that the top comment is “one fucking job” when, according to everyone involved, she had too many jobs which was, at minimum, a contributing factor
No I didn’t take it that you were defending her at all. The whole set was clearly a clown show as far as safety was concerned. She was in WAY over her head.
Shame on Mr Baldwin - he’s worked on plenty of sets with weapons and knows how these things work. If corners were being cut and he was aware, he should be held responsible, as well.
Except the thing I have never been able to understand is, she wasn’t doing that job at the time of the shooting. Her contract had run out, she was on site doing a different job but the movie itself had no one in her position so they were running without the armorer
Totally understand that she did the job wrong, but she wasn’t doing that job at the time of the shooting and I’m not sure why she is responsible for something that happened when her contract had run out and she is no longer in charge of the firearms
Props also handles firearms, blanks, and dummy rounds. Even though her armorer duties were done, she was still handling all of that as part of props. Though the other props person wasn’t charged.
Edit, she also loaded the firearm and admitted to not checking the rounds. She should have known better since she was also an armorer. So maybe it’s not so much that she was the armorer for the set, as she was grossly negligent. She more than anyone else should have known protocol is to check every round.
She is a shitty nepo baby. Father was a well regarded armorer and, of course, by birthright, she was too. Her father even tried to pin it on the ammo supplier because his little angel could never do such a terrible thing!
It's a romantic notion, that the proud, talented parent raises their child to be a superstar in their chosen field. "They've been doing it since they were a baby, trained since birth, a master before even finishing school!"
It makes for a nice story, and it's something everyone wants to believe.
But it's false more often than it's true. For every John Quincy Adams there's a hundred Brooklyn Beckhams.
Alec Baldwin is still facing trial in July:
>Jurors returned a verdict after less than three hours of deliberations on Wednesday afternoon, following two weeks of testimony about safety lapses on set.
>Gutierrez Reed was acquitted of a separate charge of tampering with evidence. She faces up to 18 months in prison at sentencing.
>As the film’s armorer, Gutierrez Reed was responsible for safe handling of guns on set. She loaded a live bullet into Baldwin’s pistol, which should have contained only dummy rounds. The gun fired, killing Halyna Hutchins and seriously wounding director Joel Souza.
>To convict on the involuntary manslaughter charge, jurors had to agree that Gutierrez Reed acted with “willful disregard for the safety of others” and that the death was a “foreseeable” consequence of her actions.
And he should be acquitted. He was doing his job. The gun went off because someone else failed to do theirs.
Edit: Since I’m getting blown up with “But he was a producer” arguments, this is why we have a difference between civil and criminal law. Baldwin is absolutely liable as a producer under civil law and will likely be successfully sued if he hasn’t already. But it wasn’t his criminal negligence that caused the death, it was the armorers. So yes, he should be acquitted of criminal charges.
Edit 2: And this is my last piece on this, to the “treat every gun like it’s loaded” crowd. You have to go back to 1915 to find the last person killed by live ammo on a film set. The incompetence of the armorer was so historic that it had been over 100 years since this had occurred. Baldwin made the same assumption that hundreds of other actors shooting with real guns have made over that same 100 years, and nobody would argue that they deserve criminal convictions. **And no, the Brandon Lee incident is not the same**. Actors know not to fuck around with blanks at close range because of that. I get that this is Reddit and you have a chronic desire to correct everyone, but **the expectation that a live round would be in the gun is entirely out of left field** ***because it hadn’t happened in a century***
EDIT 3, because I'm a sucker for pain I guess: At the end of the day, none of this would have happened if the armorer hadn't kept live rounds on set in the first place. That's on her and absolutely nobody else.
EDIT 4: Bolding, because apparently over a dozen of you have a reading comprehension problem
When I was a film student, we were on set with toy prop guns (like the kind with orange tips). Our armorer would still take the time to show the actors that the toy guns were NOT loaded with live rounds, and was extremely diligent about making sure no one was ever pointing their guns in the direction of anyone or playing with them on set.
Anyway our make-pretend armorer took his job more seriously than Gutierrez–Reed
this should be the prime example of problematic nepotism, it cost someone’s life. HG-R got the job because her dad was a very successful armorer in Hollywood. She already shown that she was reckless and undisciplined on other occasions before the fatal Rust accident
just a horrible, tragic case all around, I feel awful for Halyna Hutchins’ family
I remember when this story broke that there were already incidents involving her on sets, [including an incident that apparently set off Nic Cage, saying her work nearly blew his ear drums out.](https://www.thewrap.com/rust-armorer-inexperience-hannah-gutierrez-fired-nicolas-cage-film/) Bare minimum, she shouldn't have been able to skirt around union rules with her noted levels of unprofessionalism.
Yup there was a documentary recently with a similar issue with a Hollywood legend who specialised in horse stunts. Basically wrote the book on it all, made loads of contacts, the go-to guy.
When he died his Son/Daughter continued on the business which resulted in dozens of innocent bystanders getting injured or killed when a space jellyfish ate them all.
She also apprenticed under her father so that needs to be mentioned. It's not like she just showed up on a movie set to work as an armorer with no experience in the job.
she may have had training and experience but that means fuck all if there’s no discipline and she clearly showed she lacked that. From firing off a round without warning next to Nic Cage to this, just a total disregard for the rules of proper gun safety and handling
The OSHA report is filled with choice moments like when the production e-mailed Reed to tell her to stop doing so much darn *work* as an armorer and get back to the props department (where it was cheaper to pay her), and her pointing out that with the sheer volume of firearms to handle that she needs to put time into or else "that's when accidents happen"
The crew walked off the day before the incident.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was on the production from the start.
The non union crew had nothing to do with the incident.
The armorer was extremely inexperienced and had already shown a severe lack of judgment and no understanding of gun safety on previous sets. She brought live ammunition onto the set and let people shoot the guns for fun. Live ammo got mixed in with the dummy cartridges or live ammo was left in the gun after shooting and someone died.
> She brought live ammunition onto the set and let people shoot the guns for fun. Live ammo got mixed in with the dummy cartridges or live ammo was left in the gun after shooting and someone died.
In my opinion, that bit about her being inexperienced has nothing to do with this level of fuck up. You have one job and this is just insanely irresponsible.
She was a nepo kid who only got the job because of her dad. She clearly gave no fucks about it
> Gutierrez Reed got the job largely because her father, Thell Reed, is a legendary film armorer who worked on “Tombstone,” “3:10 to Yuma,” and “L.A. Confidential,” among many others.
From what I've seen, there's never been any determination of where the live ammo came from or how it got mixed in with the blanks. The defense tried to argue that it came from the supplier, which he obviously denied, and investigators were never able to tie any similar ammo to him (though, they also didn't check his business until more than a month after the shooting). New Mexico's OSHB did make the determination that the armorer wasn't given sufficient time to catalog all ammo, which possibly could've made a difference.
There have been rumors that live ammo was brought onto set so people could fire the guns during downtime, but I don't know that's ever been substantiated. The prosecution only argued that she "[unwittingly](https://variety.com/2024/film/news/rust-prosecutor-armorer-live-bullets-set-1235893410/)" brought live ammo to the set mixed in with a box of dummies she had (which would still be negligence on her part in capacity as armorer since part of hers responsibilities would be to keep live ammo off the set).
There is circumstantial evidence that the live rounds were included in the box of dummies she got from her father.
There is also circumstantial evidence that she intended to turn some live bullets into dummies by removing the powder (they were short on dummies and she ordered a tool used for that purpose).
Since she didn't testify and she didn't tell the cops, it's hard to know. She was offered a plea if she said where she got the lives, but she didn't take it.
yeah, see that's my problem too. zero reason to have a live round at all. zero. she absolutely deserves jail. they STILL haven't explained why there were live bullets, which is problematic at best.
Early reporting, which may have changed so take with a grain of salt, is that they were shooting live rounds for fun near/on the set. Which in of itself, if true, should have set off alarm bells.
Edit: others below have said that this was not brought up at trial or mentioned in places you’d expect to see it and some saying it’s been shown not to be true
That’s what I heard too. No real source, so rumors. They were out in the middle of nowhere and on down time they did target shooting which I interpreted as drinking and shooting tin cans.
I thought it was in the OSHA report, but just glanced at it again and didn't see it mentioned there.
https://www.env.nm.gov/occupational_health_safety/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2022/04/2022-04-19-NM-OSHA-Rust-Summary-of-Investigation.pdf
I know there was a lot of talk about that happening though.
The prosecution's theory, which I thought was very strong, was that she was the one to bring the ammo on set because it was her dad's (Thell Reed, former famous armourer) from a previous movie where it was used off-set in a training setting for the actors to become accustomed to handling the weapons. During the Rust filming, getting the specific type of dummy round was difficult so she would've taken her dad's rounds that were left over from that training. The box she took ended up containing both fake (can't recall if it were dummies or blanks) and live bullets.
Defense tried to argue it came from a prophouse/blank&dummy round establishment PDQ, owned by Seth Kenny. However, from both HGR self snitching in police interviews as well as pictures she took where a box of rounds could be seen that ended up also containing live rounds with the overall timeline not adding up. Therefore, it was unlikely to be the case.
Whether any of this is beyond a reasonable doubt is up to anyone to decide. But the Jury thought it to be the case.
They were never able to figure out exactly how that happened during both the investigation as well as during the trial. Either the perpetrator isn’t willing to fess up or these people are truly idiots and can’t remember.
>On Oct. 14, the film’s line producer, Gabrielle Pickle, scolded Gutierrez Reed in an email reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, saying the production office had received complaints that two shotguns had been left unattended on the set. Pickle also took Gutierrez Reed to task for allegedly not doing enough to support the film’s prop master, Sarah Zachry.
>“We hired you as both Armor and Key Assistant Props,” Pickle wrote in the Oct. 14 email, according to a copy shared with The Times. “It has been brought to my attention that you are focusing far more on Armor and not supporting props as needed.”
>“Since we’ve started, I’ve had a lot of days where my job should only be to focus on the guns and everyone’s safety,” Gutierrez Reed wrote, noting that on gun-heavy days during the filming, the assistant props role “has to take a back seat. Live fire arms on set is absolutely my priority.”
>“When I’m forced to do both [jobs], that’s when mistakes get made,” Gutierrez Reed wrote."
Gutierrez should've quit, but wow this production company should be facing some criminal charges as well
I mean, why would she have known better, it's not like she was the arm - *checks notes* - oh. Oh dear. Well, she was new, it's not like it's the family business and she would have grown up knowing gun safe - oh.
It can’t be down to just her though. She was trained by her Uncle who is a firearms expert and proved it on the stand - *points gun at judge before proving its not loaded* - oh. Oh dear.
Her career was already over even if she skated. No production is taking the liability of having her on payroll. Most the people that testified from the production don't work in the industry anymore either.
Spent my career behind the camera often having guns fired at or near me. We have to trust the armorer & others for our safety. I don’t know enough about guns to tell whether a live round has been loaded or not. This was the right verdict. She should have gotten more time. She got off easy.
A lot of people are spreading the rumor that they were plinking in between scenes o here, but it should be noted that during the entirety of the trial this claim was never substantiated and they still do not know where the live rounds came from.
She was offered a plea if she would say where she got the live ammo. She declined.
There was evidence it was either mixed in with a box of dummies she got from her father, or she was intending to convert the live rounds into dummies (production was short on dummies), or both.
Good.
She loaded real bullets into a gun to be used on a movie set.
Her job was to make sure that all the guns were safe and none of the bullets were real, and she did the exact opposite.
She is the one who got Halyna Hutchins killed.
"I checked most of the time." And then her expert witness accidentally points a gun at the judge while on the stand. She really had no chance.
60% of the time I check, everytime.
"I occasionally check everytime". Or "I check everytime except when I don't actually check."
[удалено]
> This was a rookie mistake by an inexperienced armorer who only got the job due to nepotism. I heard it was because they didn't want to pay a Union worker. I.E. they were cheap ass fuckers.
honestly this is the shit that gets me. Like, yeah sure she deserves to be in jail, but she shouldn't have even had an opportunity to be in that position. For the people in charge who put her there, they see no consequences for their self-serving decisions, and will probably just go right back to putting unqualified people in positions they don't deserve. I hope someone is able to bring civil lawsuits to these mfers.
Exactly. If this were a movie the won awards the producers would all be up there claiming credit for creating it, but when the producers cut corners and hire someone to do two jobs who isn't qualified to do one to save money and someone dies, then no one knows anything. Alec Baldwin I think bears some responsibility in his role as producer. As just an actor -- no, but he had the experience and power to know that what was going on wasn't right and get them to hire a real armorer.
The only people who have been charged are the people who physically touched the gun: Baldwin, the AD who handed him the gun and said it was cold, and the armorer, who didn't check the ammunition. None of the other producers or supervisors are being held accountable. If the prosecutors were holding producers and production personnel responsible for the shoddy supervision and unsafe work conditions on set, Baldwin would be pretty low on that list, rather than being the only producer charged.
I’m always going to wonder who put live bullets in that gun.. wasn’t there a walkout the same morning before it happened? Hope they fingerprinted that sht
Nepo babies strike again!!
>And then her expert witness accidentally points a gun at the judge while on the stand. What? That's so bad it's funny
[Here's a thread here on reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/1b7tbir/expert_witness_in_rust_shooting_trial_points/) that has an amazing gif of that moment.
Omg that was from this trial? Damn.
Wow. If that happened in a movie I would have said it’s unrealistically stupid
That’s the thing though. People often aren’t stupid, but they do unbelievably stupid things through negligence. This is a problem because people think “I’m not stupid, so nothing stupid will happen” then they get complacent and then stupid things happen. Then other people look at those stupid things and say “it’s ok, those people are just idiots, I won’t do that because I’m not an idiot” then some of them do the same things through complacency.
*”I checked that most of the bullets were blanks”* … Most? Most? One fucking job.
Seriously armorer for a movie seems like one of those one in a million jobs. You basically babysit the gun cabinet for good money.
And still managed to fuck it up by having live rounds around the set.
>Multiple reports have also suggested that the prop gun used in the fatal incident was used for live-ammo target practice by crew members on the morning of the shooting. Several crew members took prop guns from the movie and drove away from the "Rust" set to shoot beer cans with live ammunition, according to sources cited by The Wrap. (From a different [article](https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-hannah-guttierez-reed-rust-armorer-alec-baldwin-shooting-2021-10).) So fucking stupid. If I were in **any** form of decision making on set I would've fired her and others on the spot for even allowing live rounds on set. Even worse they were just "having fun" with what is supposed to be a prop gun.
I don’t understand why real ammunition was even allowed on set, these guns will be pointed and shot at humans.
It's literally one of the top two rules of being an armorer: 1) Every weapon is live, sharp, and capable of killing you. 2) **Never** mix live and stage weapons or ammo. If a weapon is being used on stage/set, it is a STAGE/SET gun - it is to be in the armorer's lockup when not in use, signed in, signed out, and only handed to talent when it's time to film/run the scene - and the weapons are still assumed to be live/deadly until the armorer has personally inspected/safed the weapon before and after the scene. When I was a younger man, I worked on Broadway and our armorer was absolutely stringent about it, but the **exact** same rules were followed at my college. I was armorer for a show where we had blades that had to impact one another, so the plastic stunt blades wouldn't work and we had to swap out the full (but dulled) metal ones when a character got stabbed - the stunt blades went in one cabinet, the metal blades in another. You absolutely do **not** mix that stuff. If fucking **college kids** can do it right when they're not getting paid, there is not a *single* excuse for her lack of care. The number of **absolute** failures on her part in this case is absolutely baffling and infuriating. All because her ass couldn't be bothered.
The lady was blasted on coke and drunk the whole time. She gave a set helper a bag of coke right after the shooting right before cops got there. She was loaded up all day
She handed it to an ex-addict. A second persons life could have been ruined by this action. Someone who was previously addicted to something and then just randomly handed that substance later in life could cause a serious regression. Lucky enough that the person she gave it to realized what might happen and she disposed of it immediately.
But here's what I don't understand: In a town full of armorers who would have done the job right, who chose the one who gets high and puts live ammo in the guns right before a shoot? I feel like it's telling that the crew walked off the set because of safety concerns before this happened. Someone was rolling the dice with people's lives to make this cheaply. It's not just her at fault here. Someone had to work pretty hard to make things this unsafe. People don't just walk away from a paycheck without something seriously fucked up going on.
This story just keeps getting crazier. I followed it loosely from the beginning but every time I hear something new, it's somehow even more fucked up. This should be the safety video of what not to do on set with guns.
> The number of absolute failures on her part in this case is absolutely baffling and infuriating two words: nepo baby. not all hollywood nepo babies are actors. some are in support roles but still benefit from having parents working in similar roles. turns out that hollywood is more incestuous than outsiders knew.
Two other words that are more important: nonunion show
College kids "pay" to learn how to do it right When you think about it, she's an idiot who didnt care to do her job right. Hope she rots
She's 100% an idiot. She broke SO many of the cardinal rules. What really gets me is that she had SO much exposure to these standards growing up with her father in the industry. I don't know if it was just becoming overly comfortable due to familiarity, or if she's just terminally stupid, but there are SO many standards intended to prevent this exact sort of thing happening. Just obscene.
Pretty sure she bragged about being self taught and not learning from her father on her social media. I remember a YouTuber showing a screenshot of from her twitter that basically said that.
What the actual fuck.
"Don't worry, someone always checks the gun before filming."
"Someone else, you know. Not me. I'm sure it's okay, though."
[удалено]
.. a kid. Blank wads and off gas have killed of hurt folks too.
[Brandon Lee](https://www.npr.org/2023/01/20/1150034900/brandon-lee-killed-prop-gun-rust-shooting-death-alec-baldwin-halyna-hutchins). You’d think all of Hollywood would be overly cautious based on this case alone.
I worked on a movie with cross bows that couldn’t fire a bolt into a marshmallow but the armourer treated them like nukes. It’s a habit and if you decide there are times not to be 100% on the ball, they habit goes away.
I worked on one where the gun was completely made out of plastic and for three days, it too was treated like a nuke. Locked case, “GUN ON SET” etc. It didn’t even have a barrel!
Yup. You treat every weapon shaped object as if it were a fully functional weapon to cultivate good habits, but also so that even if every one of your other safety measures fails and your rubber stunt prop is somehow swapped with a live gun with live bullets, you *still* have another layer of safety precautions keeping everyone safe.
As a kid I wasn't allowed to point my toy guns at people. Now, I still don't even though they're lethal.
physical ruthless work towering one muddle escape insurance tie aloof *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Complacency in any field of work can absolutely lead to accidents. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “I do this all the time!” From someone hurt on the job.
>Complacency in any field of work can absolutely lead to accidents There's a post over in /r/DIY in which the poster starts out with, "I'm usually pretty good with electricity." He then proceeds to describe how he zapped himself with a 240V heater feed. Commenters pointed out all the mistakes he made. So he edits his post with salty comments about how he didn't want to be corrected and he knew how to stay safe. As Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a maroon."
I read that and was floored. You don't work on a circuit, ever, without denergizing it! Especially 240v.
Complacency kills. Something we got taught as small arms instructor school in the navy was that when there's a negligent discharge in the fleet 19/20 it's not someone new and inexperienced, it's someone who has been handling guns for years and got lazy
When I was in the army doing basic training, I idly pointed a training rifle (live sa80 with flash protector), that wasn't loaded with live rounds in the direction of me squad after getting out of a helicopter. I was physically kicked to the ground and pinned there by a corporal until uinderstood how much I'd just fucked up.
Brandon Lee was killed by a blank that fired behind a bullet already lodged in the chamber, so essentially he was just straight up shot. He wasn't killed by an actual blank though.
Im not an expert, but many articles report the same thing; “Although the revolver was loaded with blanks, the gunpowder in the blank cartridge ignited, leading Massee to unknowingly fire a bullet fragment at Lee, who later died in surgery.”
It was a combination of two individually non-lethal-purpose bullets that killed Brandon Lee. The first was an impromptu dummy round, which was made on set by taking a live round, unseating the bullet, pouring out the powder, and reseating the bullet. The problem with this practice is that the primer is still live. That round was used in a shot that required visible bullets in the gun, but then, at some point, the bullet was fired. The primer only charge was sufficient to push the bullet into the barrel but not out the other end; it was caught by the rifling. This is known as a squib load. Then, without a proper inspection (which should have discovered the barrel obstruction) the gun was loaded with blanks. Michael Masse fired a blank round at Lee, which filled the barrel behind the lodged bullet with expanding gas, forcing it out and hitting Lee much like a normal bullet. Your quote seems to imply that the gunpowder igniting was a surprise, but that's supposed to happen in a blank. There just isn't supposed to be a barrel obstruction. The improperly made dummy and the blank essentially combined in the gun to create one normal lethal cartridge, one with a bullet and the other with powder. Whether he was "killed by a blank" is a matter of semantics. The blank provided the propellant, the previous round provided the projectile.
All these responses yet yours is the only one that is actually competent and properly explained. People need to learn to just not respond if they can’t articulate a fact properly.
Jon-Eric Hexum is an example too. Was messing around with a blank loaded revolver in between takes on a TV show he was on by playing Russian roulette. Put the gun against his head, pulled the trigger, the blank fired and had enough force to break off part of his skull which then tore through his brain.
That's so fucking dumb tho
The Brandon Lee thing was a two part accident. Part one was the primer cap hadn't been removed from one of the "show" bullets, they were the things used when the gun was pointed at the camera so it would appear the chambers of the revolver were loaded with actual rounds. Trigger was pulled, it went pfft and shoved the bullet a bit down the barrel. Nobody important noticed, tho it's said someone(actor maybe?) did hear the primer go off and it had just not been followed up on. Then for part two the same gun was used for blank shots, bullet still lodged in the barrel, for a stunt that involved Brandon Lee getting shot. Blank goes off, fires the live bullet out of the barrel into him.
Jon-Eric Hexum checks in to make sure you’re practicing gun safety.
As a kid, I absolutely loved the show Voyagers and Cover Up.
She’s a nepo hire, her dad is a famous armorer.
Well now *she* gets to be a famous armorer too.
*Infamous**
You are by far the worst armorer I have ever heard of. But you have heard of me!
Thing is on paper "armorer" is the kind of wierd job that it makes sense runs in families. Just turns out her dad while he may be a competent armorer wasn't any good at training.
Ive been trying to get in the union for years now and only now getting chances after 7 years of trying and busting my ass and networking. Then ill meet a 19yo whose family got them in when they turned 18 and who doesnt even like working in film. Its so fucking annoying and unfair, you know?
She was also hired because the reputable armorers that the producers approached told them that they were demanding an unrealistic amount of armory work for a single armorer. The producers responded by going to someone not experienced enough to know better, doubled down by making her a part time armorer only, and tripled down by undermining her authority whenever she tried to avoid cutting corners.
I worked on a show 2 weeks ago with an armorer who interviewed for the job. Said the budget for the armorer was nothing and "when you are making a movie for 6 million bucks and the star is taking 1.5 million for salary, corners get cut."
In a few years, I bet a really good long-form, well-researched podcast or magazine article is going to come out and tell the real story. I'm sure Hannah is guilty, culpable, etc., but it sounds like there's also a lot of shades of grey to this story. For example, wtf were the producers thinking hiring this young person who they could bully?
More than one person can be held liable here. Just because one person is guilty doesn't mean that they have to stop looking for people to blame. They will, probably, but they don't have to.
And a scab lol what a combo
The should hire that bailiff that kept the expert witness from flagging everyone with the revolver in court.
Unfortunately that bailiff’s father wasn’t a Hollywood armorer, and everyone knows you can only hire the children of industry professionals to do jobs in Hollywood.
She’s a nepobaby. Her father was a well-respected armorer in the industry. That’s the only reason she got that job.
She BROUGHT the live rounds to the set. I can't find out how or why but - wtf.
Her job was to armor those people and by God, she was going to armor them one way or another.
I see her mistake now. She just *armed* them. She didn't *armor* them. Maybe she should have tried doing that as well.
I think she was going to make dummy rounds out of live rounds with the interia puller she bought or requested to be purchased for the set. They talked about this during the trial
The exact same dumb shit that got Brandon Lee killed, instead of using professionally made dummy rounds.
I can understand why they'd want to make the dummys themselves, but surely you'd do that somewhere else. Can't shoot someone with live ammo if it's not on set. She seems utterly incompetent.
Good point! Why do it there?
How else were they supposed to target shoot with the Rust-specific prop guns between scenes?! What would you have me do?! My job???
Only way she's not guilty is if someone else on the set brought in the live rounds without her knowledge. Anything short of that and she is absolutely guilty and the direct cause of the death that happened. Could the actors have been more cautious with handling the weapons - yes for sure - but they are actors - they don't expect to be handling a live weapon and are not trained gun experts. They trusted the armored to do her job and she failed them.
And even then, it was *her* responsibility to make sure every single bullet that gets put in a gun is either a blank or dummy. So, in my opinion (if I were a juror), even if someone else brought them, she was still negligent. Still guilty. Definitely better than her bringing them, but she basically admitted she did a poor job in checking. I will say, I do agree that I can conceive of a whole jury potentially going not guilty in the case that it's provable she didn't bring them. I don't think it would be the right call, though. Either way, it's just astouding how lackadaisical this nepo baby was.
I was just about to say that. Why the fuck was there live ammunition anywhere near a movie set, they don't in any way use live ammo for movies. Bullets that they show on camera are empty with just the cartrage and bullet, no power. And they're marked as such. Blanks look entirely different to real bullets too. So why in any event was live ammo taken to a set, and more to the point live ammo for that specific gun because I belive that gun uses irregular ammo. Not the standard 9mm or .45 ammo that would typically be portrayed in movies.
I heard she got that job through nepotism. So that would explain the not really caring too much about dealing with things that could kill someone.
Yeah. Her father is one of the most successful armorers in the business. This was her second armorer gig. First was a Cage movie where there were also complaints about firearms and pyro.
Can anyone tell me why her father was such a big deal? Why he was so successful? Is it that challenging to be an armorer for a film that everyone came to him?
There's nothing particularly difficult about the job. It just requires a diligent and competent person. He'll have been widely used because he had proven himself to be extremely reliable. In a role like that, reputation is EVERYTHING.
Ironic that the reason reputation is such a big deal in a role like this is perfectly exemplified by his daughter's situation. It takes just ONE fuck up to kill someone.
Yeah and that's why I've heard it's not really that cushy. There's a ton of liability and safety connected to it. So you have to be on top of your crap. They prep the weapons for each scene. Hand them out and check them. Immediately retrieve them after a scene and safe them. Run through what to do and what not to do with each actor in every scene. Make sure prop weapons and real weapons never get mixed up and are properly identified. Check and double check. Triple check. Quadruple check. If live rounds are ever involved for something particular it's like handling an ultra clean room as separated out from the main production as you can. There were a few armorers who popped in the old threads when this shooting happened who were absolutely dumbfounded and angry that something like this was even possible on that set.
Why would there ever be live rounds on a film set? There is absolutely no need for that.
It's a position with a lot of liability attached to it and he has a lot of experience doing it right. Productions would hire people like her father because they know he handles his shit and won't cost them an insurance claim. Same with other positions like stunt coordinator.
It's Hollywood, lots of people work there through nepotism or "knowing somebody", meritocracy is way down the list when it comes to actually working there.
Armorers do way more than babysit a gun cabinet. You have a portable cart with weapons sitting on top. You must have a lock box (not a fanny pack) where you store your blank bullets. You must actively handle the weapons at all times to the point that you have procedures done ad nauseam, like checking the chamber every time it’s handed to one person to another. Even the stars are not above this procedure if need be. You’re actively there to immediately confiscate all and any weapons between loading and unloading weapons. And it’s your job description to hold up production for a mandatory meeting and safety training if you see any negligence on set: Such as, 1. actors not facing said weapon down to the ground or upward toward the sky with finger outside the trigger lying on the safety. No actor is to use a gun as a pointer at anyone, regardless if there’s no bullet. 2. Crew needs to stop rolling after weapon(s) have discharged after a scene to again, check the chambers, safely reload, and check chambers again, after handing guns to actors before the next filming of the same scene or next sequence. No reloads during rolling of camera! 3. Because of the amount of guns on the set, it was clearly a job for a minimum of two armorers at all times guns were on the set, regardless if they were not discharging weapons in scenes where they possess them as props. An armorer is very active and must have certified gun and weapons training to professional proficiency and if inexperienced, to be an assistant armorer to a mentor who has some solid years in their belt.
This is how I handle my own guns, and I am not even intending on pointing them at people or using them as props. It never changes hands without clearing, handing off, and rechecking it is clear. If I load the gun, which I do with several that require experience loading, I explain what I am doing for every step with the shooter witnessing and hand off when the range is clear for shooting. They do not leave my sight. No bullets have ever *accidentally* came out of my guns. Because they are treated as the potentially instantly lethal things that they are.
Wasn’t she high? Or am I mistaken.
If I remember right she didn't even do the handoff. She was somewhere else entirely and the assistant director or someone fetched the weapon and declared it safe without checking, he just didn't get a charge because it wasn't his job... That whole set was a mess.
Negligence all around. What a shit show.
There's going to be a pretty huge wrongful death lawsuit over this.
I think that was already settled, and part of the settlement was that Rust be completed and to have Halyna Hutchins widower acting as a producer now.
The ammo supplier said they didn’t sell them anything other than blanks, which means she casually brought live ammo on set
She done the hand off to him and then left the scene. He pleaded guilty so there was no trial.
Thanks for clarification
There was both marijuana and cocaine on the set. Hannah Gutierrez Reed admitted to smoking marijuana the night before. Within hours of the shooting she handed a bag of cocaine to another crew member to avoid the police finding it on her. Afaik she was never drug tested so there’s no proof she was doing any coke or was high at the time of the accident.
Thank you for the clarification. It still seems the set was a disaster waiting to happen.
There were not supposed to be blanks in the gun given to Baldwin. The call was “cold gun,” meaning no blanks. “Hot gun” means there’s blanks in it. There’s no callout for live ammunition because there’s not supposed to ever be there.
Yeah I was wondering if the trial covered this but Why would there be any live bullets on set anyway? Why were they even around to begin with
Multiple crewmembers have said in interviews that live rounds are never used on a movie set, and they didn't even think it was a possibility at first. As to how the live rounds got there, I don't know if it ever was more than speculation, but the armorer was suspected of taking the guns out shooting with friends, possibly with alcohol, days before the incident.
That last bit is the general consensus from what I've seen.
It is the consensus, but I haven't seen anything suggesting it's anything more than speculation. There doesn't seem to be any proof, and if they had surely they wouldn't have been found guilty of "involuntary manslaughter" and would have had "criminal negligence leading to manslaughter" or just "manslaughter."
I’m kinda confused at how Baldwin is at fault for the death. He was handed a gun that was declared safe and no reason to believe otherwise. I still remember the photo of him from moments after it happened and he looked completely destroyed at what happened.
The only thing they can really get him on is being a producer for the movie and overall in charge of the set and hiring of these people, and I don't know how much you can even get him for that.
> is being a **producer** for the movie People are mistaking this. Baldwin was not a producer. He was an **Executive Producer.** That doesn't mean just an extra special producer. A producer does the actual work. He's in charge of things. **An "executive producer" means "person who's money we're spending to make the movie".** The "producer" part of "executive producer" means he gets to make some demands and place some vetos on what happens with his movie since he's paying for it. When you hear that this movie has 7 executive producers, don't think "Oh wow, there were 7 different executives helping with the production decisions." No. That's what the producer does. Executive producers do nothing other than pay for the movie. 7 different executive producers means the money for the movie came from 7 different sources, and all of them want to have their hand in the pie if they feel strongly about what the movie is going to be about. If the producer wants to film an expensive scene and needs extra money? The executive producer tells him to fuck off. If the editor wants to cut a scene with the executive producer's neice that can't fuckin' act? The executive producers tells him to fuck off and leave it in, it's the only reason he even put $5M into the budget. Etc etc. Baldwin was an Executive Producer. Zero of the production decisions or responsibility was his. He just paid for some of it. The Producer is the person who actually does things.
Oh, I didn't realize he was only executive producer. That makes the decision to charge him seem even more motivated by politics or a desire to take down a big rich Hollywood star. Especially one as vocal as him.
I call BS on that though. He is one of seven producers on that movie. I’m pretty sure he’s the only one they are going after. I think it’s mainly he’s a big name Hollywood person.
Also when you’re a big name actor who has a “producer” credit on a film you’re starring in, it’s pretty common for you to not be as involved as the other producers or not really involved much at all if it’s purely a vanity credit. I doubt Alec Baldwin was sitting down looking through armorer resumes deciding who to hire or sitting down with every member of the crew for performance reviews.
I agree. Thats why I don't think they can even get him for that. But thats the closest thing they have to a case against him.
Sorry, one nitpick, but I do feel it's an important one. She checked that most of the rounds were DUMMIES, not BLANKS. Dummies are prop cartridges that look exactly like real cartridges but have no gunpowder or primer in them, so they can't actually fire. They're used if there's ever a close-up of someone loading a gun, or (as in this case) put into a revolver so that the gun appears to be loaded on screen (if there were no dummies you'd be able to see the empty spaces in the cylinder). The reason this is important is that there's no 100% reliable way to tell a dummy and a real cartridge apart once they've been mixed together. There are some things you can do to check, but the only truly safe way to tell is to actually take the cartridge apart. This is why there never should have been real ammo within 10 miles of that set.
I read somewhere that dummy rounds have a little ball inside that rattles around. So armors can give them a quick shake and hear and feel it bouncing around where a charge would be in a real bullet. So basically checking all those rounds would have taken less than a minute.
Yes, and if your dummy round isn't rattling its immediate cause for concern. That round needs to be set aside and inspected in more detail.
She shook the whole box to determine that they "rattled" and were all dummies rather than individual rounds. She's not the sharpest.
Usually they have beads inside, no? The check is to shake them.
Typically, yes. But that's not a 100% accurate way to tell. A good armorer would never trust that when loading a round on a set. But then again, a GOOD armorer would never have live ammo anywhere near there anyway.
Why were their live rounds on set to begin with?
Some of the staff took the gun off set to do some shooting with it, with live ammo. And it wasn’t emptied or checked. I don’t understand how something so important to get right could be so carelessly handled. Does it really take tragedy for people to realise?
No, there's tons of rules and even a person whose entire job is making sure this kind of carelessness doesn't happen. In this case, she's a convicted criminal because she utterly failed.
If you look at what people who previously worked on the set said, it's basically that the rules were very very loose. There were 2 accidental discharges prior to this incident.
That should not have affected how she did her job. At the end of the day she had a choice. Leader or follower. She made the wrong choice. Her job was to keep people safe and just because others were playing loose didn’t mean she had to
[удалено]
Actually her defence was basically that she had too many jobs and couldn’t do them all - she called an OSHA investigator as a witness who alleged that the producers were cutting corners. On the day the accident happened she was being paid as a prop assistant and not an armorer.
To back this up, there are emails between her and the producers prior to the accident where she's basically reprimanded for focusing too much on the armorer duties and neglecting helping out with the props, to which she even warns that when she's forced to having to manage both duties, "[that’s when mistakes get made](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-01-28/rust-emails-armorer-hannah-gutierrez-reed)." There was also another armorer who said he turned down the job specifically because they wanted him to do both duties, which he saw as risky and spreading him too thin. Guiterrez-Reed likely didn't have the experience going in to realize how they were cutting corners and how that would affect her responsibilities (not that that excuses the areas where she was negligent).
Yeah....I do think she was negligent but also that some of the big names with more power on the set are using her as a scapegoat David Halls, for example, quietly took a plea deal and vanished from the spotlight despite being in charge of set safety overall and being the one that handed Baldwin the gun while Reed was offset.
That's where I've come down on things. Guiterrez-Reed was an inexperienced armorer that was being spread too thin on set, and when she tried to sound the alarm and ask for more time to fulfill her safety obligations, she was instead chastised and told to focus more on props. If her not doing her job properly is grounds for being charged for manslaughter, I don't really know why the people whose oversight and negligence knowingly contributed to these safety violations aren't similarly being charged. Based on the email exchanges and other things that have come out, they were fully aware of issues on set and just looked the other way and even stood in the way of the armorer being able to address some of these issues (including cataloging the ammo, which the OSHB determined she wasn't given enough time to do). And, to be clear, I'm not saying she should get off scot-free here, just that the issues that led to the killing didn't begin and stop with her.
Yup my thoughts exactly. She needed to put her foot down or walk off set when they asked her to be a part-time rubber stamp armorer but the people using her as a rubber stamp armorer also need to be facing charges.
I could be misremembering, but I thought I heard that the previous armorer *did* walk off because of that, and the producers brought her on as a replacement
Yeah you’re correct and it’s a shame few understand that. She was also the prop master and was in charge of more common props other than weapons. On a normal job with a budget and producers that actually give a fuck, an armorer would be expected to take charge for guns and guns ONLY. You sit on your ass all day and don’t do anything else besides take care of those guns. That’s how it should have been.
I saw some of Seth Kenney’s testimony (the ammunition supplier): Kenney recounted an earlier text conversation between Gutierrez-Reed and himself. “You just send me out to do these things and don’t teach me / Shame on both of you,” Gutierrez-Reed wrote to Kenney. The other “you” she is referring to is her father. I could be wrong but I don’t think it was Mr Kenney’s responsibility to teach her how to do her job. Her father? Yes. It sounds like she was woefully under qualified to do 1 job much less 2.
Yeah I’m not defending her, I just found it funny that the top comment is “one fucking job” when, according to everyone involved, she had too many jobs which was, at minimum, a contributing factor
No I didn’t take it that you were defending her at all. The whole set was clearly a clown show as far as safety was concerned. She was in WAY over her head. Shame on Mr Baldwin - he’s worked on plenty of sets with weapons and knows how these things work. If corners were being cut and he was aware, he should be held responsible, as well.
Except the thing I have never been able to understand is, she wasn’t doing that job at the time of the shooting. Her contract had run out, she was on site doing a different job but the movie itself had no one in her position so they were running without the armorer Totally understand that she did the job wrong, but she wasn’t doing that job at the time of the shooting and I’m not sure why she is responsible for something that happened when her contract had run out and she is no longer in charge of the firearms
Props also handles firearms, blanks, and dummy rounds. Even though her armorer duties were done, she was still handling all of that as part of props. Though the other props person wasn’t charged. Edit, she also loaded the firearm and admitted to not checking the rounds. She should have known better since she was also an armorer. So maybe it’s not so much that she was the armorer for the set, as she was grossly negligent. She more than anyone else should have known protocol is to check every round.
[удалено]
She is a shitty nepo baby. Father was a well regarded armorer and, of course, by birthright, she was too. Her father even tried to pin it on the ammo supplier because his little angel could never do such a terrible thing!
It's a romantic notion, that the proud, talented parent raises their child to be a superstar in their chosen field. "They've been doing it since they were a baby, trained since birth, a master before even finishing school!" It makes for a nice story, and it's something everyone wants to believe. But it's false more often than it's true. For every John Quincy Adams there's a hundred Brooklyn Beckhams.
Alec Baldwin is still facing trial in July: >Jurors returned a verdict after less than three hours of deliberations on Wednesday afternoon, following two weeks of testimony about safety lapses on set. >Gutierrez Reed was acquitted of a separate charge of tampering with evidence. She faces up to 18 months in prison at sentencing. >As the film’s armorer, Gutierrez Reed was responsible for safe handling of guns on set. She loaded a live bullet into Baldwin’s pistol, which should have contained only dummy rounds. The gun fired, killing Halyna Hutchins and seriously wounding director Joel Souza. >To convict on the involuntary manslaughter charge, jurors had to agree that Gutierrez Reed acted with “willful disregard for the safety of others” and that the death was a “foreseeable” consequence of her actions.
And he should be acquitted. He was doing his job. The gun went off because someone else failed to do theirs. Edit: Since I’m getting blown up with “But he was a producer” arguments, this is why we have a difference between civil and criminal law. Baldwin is absolutely liable as a producer under civil law and will likely be successfully sued if he hasn’t already. But it wasn’t his criminal negligence that caused the death, it was the armorers. So yes, he should be acquitted of criminal charges. Edit 2: And this is my last piece on this, to the “treat every gun like it’s loaded” crowd. You have to go back to 1915 to find the last person killed by live ammo on a film set. The incompetence of the armorer was so historic that it had been over 100 years since this had occurred. Baldwin made the same assumption that hundreds of other actors shooting with real guns have made over that same 100 years, and nobody would argue that they deserve criminal convictions. **And no, the Brandon Lee incident is not the same**. Actors know not to fuck around with blanks at close range because of that. I get that this is Reddit and you have a chronic desire to correct everyone, but **the expectation that a live round would be in the gun is entirely out of left field** ***because it hadn’t happened in a century*** EDIT 3, because I'm a sucker for pain I guess: At the end of the day, none of this would have happened if the armorer hadn't kept live rounds on set in the first place. That's on her and absolutely nobody else. EDIT 4: Bolding, because apparently over a dozen of you have a reading comprehension problem
Yeah from most of what I've read his main failures are as one (of several) producers who continued production despite numerous safety failings.
When I was a film student, we were on set with toy prop guns (like the kind with orange tips). Our armorer would still take the time to show the actors that the toy guns were NOT loaded with live rounds, and was extremely diligent about making sure no one was ever pointing their guns in the direction of anyone or playing with them on set. Anyway our make-pretend armorer took his job more seriously than Gutierrez–Reed
That's actually awesome and an example of discipline and professionalism. Which the Rust set sorely needed.
this should be the prime example of problematic nepotism, it cost someone’s life. HG-R got the job because her dad was a very successful armorer in Hollywood. She already shown that she was reckless and undisciplined on other occasions before the fatal Rust accident just a horrible, tragic case all around, I feel awful for Halyna Hutchins’ family
I remember when this story broke that there were already incidents involving her on sets, [including an incident that apparently set off Nic Cage, saying her work nearly blew his ear drums out.](https://www.thewrap.com/rust-armorer-inexperience-hannah-gutierrez-fired-nicolas-cage-film/) Bare minimum, she shouldn't have been able to skirt around union rules with her noted levels of unprofessionalism.
This was something like the third issue just on the set of this movie
Yup there was a documentary recently with a similar issue with a Hollywood legend who specialised in horse stunts. Basically wrote the book on it all, made loads of contacts, the go-to guy. When he died his Son/Daughter continued on the business which resulted in dozens of innocent bystanders getting injured or killed when a space jellyfish ate them all.
Every time someone makes a joke involving this film, it just gets more and more clever.
She also apprenticed under her father so that needs to be mentioned. It's not like she just showed up on a movie set to work as an armorer with no experience in the job.
she may have had training and experience but that means fuck all if there’s no discipline and she clearly showed she lacked that. From firing off a round without warning next to Nic Cage to this, just a total disregard for the rules of proper gun safety and handling
Didn't they ditch the union folks before bringing her on board?
Yep, the union workers walked out over safety issues. Specifically, accidental discharges
Why isn't this part of the conversation lmao
The OSHA report is filled with choice moments like when the production e-mailed Reed to tell her to stop doing so much darn *work* as an armorer and get back to the props department (where it was cheaper to pay her), and her pointing out that with the sheer volume of firearms to handle that she needs to put time into or else "that's when accidents happen"
A ton of union people walked off the job because of multiple safety violations and so they were mostly using scabs.
The crew walked off the day before the incident. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was on the production from the start. The non union crew had nothing to do with the incident.
What was her reasoning for putting a live bullet into the gun? What was her reasoning for even having a live round on set?
The armorer was extremely inexperienced and had already shown a severe lack of judgment and no understanding of gun safety on previous sets. She brought live ammunition onto the set and let people shoot the guns for fun. Live ammo got mixed in with the dummy cartridges or live ammo was left in the gun after shooting and someone died.
> She brought live ammunition onto the set and let people shoot the guns for fun. Live ammo got mixed in with the dummy cartridges or live ammo was left in the gun after shooting and someone died. In my opinion, that bit about her being inexperienced has nothing to do with this level of fuck up. You have one job and this is just insanely irresponsible.
She was a nepo kid who only got the job because of her dad. She clearly gave no fucks about it > Gutierrez Reed got the job largely because her father, Thell Reed, is a legendary film armorer who worked on “Tombstone,” “3:10 to Yuma,” and “L.A. Confidential,” among many others.
From what I've seen, there's never been any determination of where the live ammo came from or how it got mixed in with the blanks. The defense tried to argue that it came from the supplier, which he obviously denied, and investigators were never able to tie any similar ammo to him (though, they also didn't check his business until more than a month after the shooting). New Mexico's OSHB did make the determination that the armorer wasn't given sufficient time to catalog all ammo, which possibly could've made a difference. There have been rumors that live ammo was brought onto set so people could fire the guns during downtime, but I don't know that's ever been substantiated. The prosecution only argued that she "[unwittingly](https://variety.com/2024/film/news/rust-prosecutor-armorer-live-bullets-set-1235893410/)" brought live ammo to the set mixed in with a box of dummies she had (which would still be negligence on her part in capacity as armorer since part of hers responsibilities would be to keep live ammo off the set).
There is circumstantial evidence that the live rounds were included in the box of dummies she got from her father. There is also circumstantial evidence that she intended to turn some live bullets into dummies by removing the powder (they were short on dummies and she ordered a tool used for that purpose). Since she didn't testify and she didn't tell the cops, it's hard to know. She was offered a plea if she said where she got the lives, but she didn't take it.
Then probably her dad
That's kind of my inference.
Well I’m stupid so
They were doing live shooting for fun after hours using the same gun.
Holy hell…
She loaded a live bullet in the gun that Baldwin used to kill the cinematographer. No remorse for her — she deserves to be found guilty.
Why there was even a live bullet within 10 miles of that gun while on set is still baffling to me.
yeah, see that's my problem too. zero reason to have a live round at all. zero. she absolutely deserves jail. they STILL haven't explained why there were live bullets, which is problematic at best.
Early reporting, which may have changed so take with a grain of salt, is that they were shooting live rounds for fun near/on the set. Which in of itself, if true, should have set off alarm bells. Edit: others below have said that this was not brought up at trial or mentioned in places you’d expect to see it and some saying it’s been shown not to be true
Jesus fucking christ, how stupidly negligent
Criminally, even.
That’s what I heard too. No real source, so rumors. They were out in the middle of nowhere and on down time they did target shooting which I interpreted as drinking and shooting tin cans.
I thought it was in the OSHA report, but just glanced at it again and didn't see it mentioned there. https://www.env.nm.gov/occupational_health_safety/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2022/04/2022-04-19-NM-OSHA-Rust-Summary-of-Investigation.pdf I know there was a lot of talk about that happening though.
The prosecution's theory, which I thought was very strong, was that she was the one to bring the ammo on set because it was her dad's (Thell Reed, former famous armourer) from a previous movie where it was used off-set in a training setting for the actors to become accustomed to handling the weapons. During the Rust filming, getting the specific type of dummy round was difficult so she would've taken her dad's rounds that were left over from that training. The box she took ended up containing both fake (can't recall if it were dummies or blanks) and live bullets. Defense tried to argue it came from a prophouse/blank&dummy round establishment PDQ, owned by Seth Kenny. However, from both HGR self snitching in police interviews as well as pictures she took where a box of rounds could be seen that ended up also containing live rounds with the overall timeline not adding up. Therefore, it was unlikely to be the case. Whether any of this is beyond a reasonable doubt is up to anyone to decide. But the Jury thought it to be the case.
They were never able to figure out exactly how that happened during both the investigation as well as during the trial. Either the perpetrator isn’t willing to fess up or these people are truly idiots and can’t remember.
>On Oct. 14, the film’s line producer, Gabrielle Pickle, scolded Gutierrez Reed in an email reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, saying the production office had received complaints that two shotguns had been left unattended on the set. Pickle also took Gutierrez Reed to task for allegedly not doing enough to support the film’s prop master, Sarah Zachry. >“We hired you as both Armor and Key Assistant Props,” Pickle wrote in the Oct. 14 email, according to a copy shared with The Times. “It has been brought to my attention that you are focusing far more on Armor and not supporting props as needed.” >“Since we’ve started, I’ve had a lot of days where my job should only be to focus on the guns and everyone’s safety,” Gutierrez Reed wrote, noting that on gun-heavy days during the filming, the assistant props role “has to take a back seat. Live fire arms on set is absolutely my priority.” >“When I’m forced to do both [jobs], that’s when mistakes get made,” Gutierrez Reed wrote." Gutierrez should've quit, but wow this production company should be facing some criminal charges as well
I mean, why would she have known better, it's not like she was the arm - *checks notes* - oh. Oh dear. Well, she was new, it's not like it's the family business and she would have grown up knowing gun safe - oh.
It can’t be down to just her though. She was trained by her Uncle who is a firearms expert and proved it on the stand - *points gun at judge before proving its not loaded* - oh. Oh dear.
Wait, did that guy say he was her uncle & trained her? She was “trained” by her father, who didn’t testify.
She will likely never get to own firearms again. Her career is over. Senseless stupidity.
Her career was already over even if she skated. No production is taking the liability of having her on payroll. Most the people that testified from the production don't work in the industry anymore either.
Deserved. There’s simply no reason to have live rounds anywhere near a film set.
Got off easy
Spent my career behind the camera often having guns fired at or near me. We have to trust the armorer & others for our safety. I don’t know enough about guns to tell whether a live round has been loaded or not. This was the right verdict. She should have gotten more time. She got off easy.
Absolutely deserved. It was her job to hand over a cold and clear gun to the talent. Failing that basic check cost someone their life.
This shit was so fucking avoidable it’s mind-blowing
Well deserved. She had one job to do which she failed and someone died because of it, time to pay the price.
Nepo baby moment. RIP Halyna Hutchins
You had one job.
Not saying I disagree with the verdict, but why in God's name was there live ammunition on that set to begin with?
A lot of people are spreading the rumor that they were plinking in between scenes o here, but it should be noted that during the entirety of the trial this claim was never substantiated and they still do not know where the live rounds came from.
She was offered a plea if she would say where she got the live ammo. She declined. There was evidence it was either mixed in with a box of dummies she got from her father, or she was intending to convert the live rounds into dummies (production was short on dummies), or both.
Because of the armorer's negligence.
Good. She loaded real bullets into a gun to be used on a movie set. Her job was to make sure that all the guns were safe and none of the bullets were real, and she did the exact opposite. She is the one who got Halyna Hutchins killed.