Alec Baldwin Didn’t Pull Trigger In Fatal Rust Incident, Says Assistant Director

Asked if it was in the script for him to pull the trigger, Baldwin said:

“No, no, no, never pulled the trigger. That was the training I had. On day one of my instruction in this business people said to me, never take the gun and go click-click-click-click-click because even though it’s incremental, you damage the firing. You don’t do that.”

In the aftermath of the incident, Baldwin has been the target of public scrutiny. Sitting before Stephanopoulos, the actor recalls a barrage of claims that he murdered Hutchins with intent, that he loaded the gun, and that it is affecting his school-aged children. Actors, politicians, and observers alike stipulate that regardless of who handed what to him, it was still his responsibility to check the weapon himself. Baldwin disagrees, placing more responsibility on the armorer who loaded the weapon and the assistant director who told him it was a cold gun. Then he says something of interest, something a past prop master had told him: “We don’t want the actor to be the last line of defense against a catastrophic breach of safety with the gun.”

The statement underlines the scope of the problem with this incident. This was not a failure of one man who should have indeed checked his weapon before doing anything else, this was a multi-tiered failure to protect the people on the set. Normally, as George Clooney pointed out, an armorer acts as a custodian of the weapon and physically shows its contents to be safe before every take. But Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was kept outside of the church due to COVID-19 regulations, according to a sworn statement. 

An industry-wide standard is needed, one where protocols ensure that there are a minimum amount of people (according to the size of the production and amount of weaponry) who must be responsible for the weapons used on set at all times, and must be present in every scene where a weapon is used (whether the script calls for it to be fired or not). There should be no confusion on who handles guns on set and when. Amid the police investigation, memorials, and litigation, Baldwin agrees on that much:

“I don’t know how that bullet arrived in that gun. I don’t know. But, I’m all for doing anything that will take us to a place where it’s this is less likely to happen again.”

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