The Rust shooting case—where Alec Baldwin negligently fired a .45 Long Colt round that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza on October 21, 2021—keeps coming up in the news despite the case being nearly 4 years old.
My latest dive into this mess comes courtesy of James Reeves’ new YouTube series interviewing Hollywood armorer Bryan Carpenter to get answers from the expert witness in the Alec Baldwin case. Their Part 2 discussion covers Carpenter’s insider perspective in this sensitive case, and Reeves also goes on to question how this incident might color future productions and what kind of mistakes actually need to happen in order to lead to this type of accident on a Hollywood set.
Right off the bat, Carpenter doesn’t mince words. According to him, the set was a circus of incompetence. Negligent discharges were routine—stunt performers mishandling loaded lever-actions, crew pointing guns at kids, even the prop master popping off a round. The young armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was in over her head, leaving live rounds intermingled with dummies.
Even basic safety checks like shaking the rounds to listen for the sound of loose bbs in the cases (indicating that they are blanks) were not performed on set by anyone. Then there’s Baldwin, who called for his “really”—a real Colt Single Action Army revolver—during a rehearsal. Why a live firearm for a dry run? Carpenter’s blunt: “Unnecessary. A good armorer says no. Use a Nerf gun.”
The fatal moment came after lunch. Gutierrez-Reed loaded the Colt with what she thought were dummies. The gun passed through first AD Dave Hall, who had no business touching it, to Baldwin. He holstered it, drew it, cocked it, and pulled the trigger. A 255-grain lead slug punched through Hutchins’ chest and lodged in Souza’s shoulder. Baldwin’s defense? “I didn’t pull the trigger,” Carpenter calls BS, citing FBI and independent analyses proving the gun couldn’t fire without a trigger pull. Case closed.
But Baldwin’s liability isn’t just about that shot. As the top producer—number one on the call sheet—he was “the man,” per Carpenter. The camera crew had walked off over safety concerns, leaving Hutchins to run the camera herself. Baldwin saw the chaos—negligent discharges, an inexperienced armorer, a crew stretched thin—and did nothing. “Time is money,” Carpenter speculates, suggesting Baldwin pushed forward to save a buck rather than halt production – in the first video, he mentioned that armorers are looked at in different “tiers.” A producer’s job includes safety. Baldwin failed miserably.
Gutierrez-Reed faced justice—convicted and maxed out with an 18-month sentence. Baldwin? His trial imploded two days in, dismissed with prejudice over a box of ammo from PDQ Props that the prosecution didn’t disclose. Carpenter was set to testify when the call came: “Case over.” He’s pissed—not because he hates Baldwin, but because a woman’s life was snuffed out, and justice stalled on a technicality.
This wasn’t just an armorer’s screw-up. Baldwin’s own words haunt him. In interviews with George Stephanopoulos, he bragged, “I’m an expert. I know what I’m doing.” Decades of gun movies under his belt, yet he pointed a loaded revolver at a human—violating Cooper’s Rule #2: Never point a firearm at anything you’re not willing to destroy. Expert? Hardly. Carpenter’s ritual is telling: he hands a gun to actors with one word—“Control”—and makes them repeat it. Baldwin took control and blew it.
What’s the fallout for guns in Hollywood? Carpenter sees a shift. Dwayne Johnson swore off real firearms post-Rust, and VFX is closing the gap—Unreal Engine muzzle flashes now fool even trained eyes. But he’s pragmatic: “Stunts kill more people annually than guns on set. Ban those, too?” Risk is inherent in filmmaking. The fix isn’t banning guns; it’s hiring competent armorers and holding producers accountable. Hollywood might lean harder on CGI, but Carpenter doubts it’ll kill the real thing entirely—producers still crave authenticity when it fits the budget.
The Rust tragedy is a warning to the Hollywood industry. Baldwin’s negligence—personal and professional—cost a life. Gutierrez-Reed paid the price; he didn’t. As gun owners, we know the stakes: one lapse, one unchecked round, and it’s over. Hollywood’s anti-gun elite love preaching, but when Baldwin held that Colt, he wasn’t above the law of the land or the basic rules of firearm safety. If you’re interested in hearing the first two episodes in this series, you can check out James Reeves’ YouTube channel videos below. Be sure to let him, and the rest of the readers here, know what you think of this incident and how things have turned out.
a. baldwin was and is a known self serving ratbassturd who without bothering for a moment to consider others by verifying safe made the decision to aim center mass and pull the trigger. The shooter a. baldwin owns it lock, stock and barrel.
It wasn’t a Colt, it was an Uberti, from what I heard. Ad yes, they are extremely reliable. They will not fire unless the trigger is pulled, which truth be told is very light trigger, especially when the thumb is on the hammer. I agree with everything this guys says. Baldwin should have gone to prison for this. I could easily believe that the fix was in.
I checked the ‘weight’ of the trigger return spring on a number of SSA style revolvers. Ounces! That trigger was probably “pulled” before the hammer was cocked.
It wasn’t a Uberti, it was a Pietta. One of the Pietta brothers came to testify in court.
If I squeeze real hard I can get the hammer to drop when my Pietta is on half cock.
It doesn’t hit the primer hard enough to set it off though.
As for me I will not point any real gun at anyone unless I plan to shoot them.
There were a lot of mistakes with this.
For one Cowboy music doesn’t have the lyrics
🎶 I got a freaky old lady named cocaine Katy🎶
Mine will only do that if I swap out the hammer
(don’t do this, it will almost always make the gun unsafe to use and if you want to make it safe the gunsmithing involved is pretty fiddly/tricky/precise).
(Possessing a Dremel tool does not make you a gunsmith)
Factory , no mods.
Does she embroider all your jeans?
it was a Pietta.
Halyna Hutchins- R.I.P.
Alec Balddim- P.O.S.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed – Partially Culpable Scapegoat
Dead horse…quit beating it
Alec Baldwin is a knob.
Just my opinion, of course.
I thought Baldwin had used a Pietta?
I still would like to know how his case was thrown out over non disclosed evidence, but the same evidence was not disclosed in the armorers case and that was just fine to the courts?
Brent Harney,
There is a saying in the U.S. Military, “Rank has its privileges.” That same concept applies to the Ruling Class–even more so when a Ruling Class member has extra-special status such as being an “A list” entertainer.
One small note re. the article above: The rounds with the BBs that are shaken to demonstrate they are empty (“rattlers”)are not blanks. They are dummy rounds. Blanks have powder and primer but no bullet and make noise and flash. Dummy rounds are used when the appearance of a loaded revolver is needed and contain a bullet with no powder or live primer.
My personal opinion: instituting safety at that production was as simple as not having any live ammunition onsite. And because it was a feature film, there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to have live ammunition onsite.
If the production wanted muzzle flash and blast (on the cheap without computer generated graphics in post-production), then they would use blanks which are immediately obvious from the absence of any bullet in the cartridge“. Even with nothing more than blanks, the armorer would have to educate everyone on the potential danger of blanks which includes ensuring that no one is within 15 feet of the muzzle when the actor pulls the trigger.
Finally, if the production wanted bullets to be visible in the revolver’s cylinder on certain camera angles and camera closeup views, then they would simply insert bullets (without any casing or propellant) into the cylinder.
P.S. in the very unlikely event that the production somehow wanted a camera angle and closeup of a revolver with bullets in the cylinder which actually shoots–e.g. actually shooting real live ammunition–that is an entirely different animal. That would require extremely carefully managed staff and equipment placement as well as extremely carefully managed lines of fire. Plus the armorer would only bring out live ammunition for the actual few minutes of filming the scene after which the armorer would immediately recover all live ammunition. That also means that the armorer would NOT allow any live ammunition out of his/her possession for practice/rehearsals. Oh, and the armorer would only have the minimum number of cartridges necessary for filming the scene-and would have all cartridges numbered, logged, and accounted for.
I told you from the jump, Baldwin wouldn’t go down over this in Santa Fe County.
I’m not sure why people feel the need to bring this up repeatedly. It’s a corrupt area of the country, which isn’t unusual as most are, but it’s openly tribal about things like this. Baldwin is a “good” person. “Good” people are not punished.
“Good” being the in-group.
“I told you from the jump, Baldwin wouldn’t go down over this in Santa Fe County.
I’m not sure why people feel the need to bring this up repeatedly. ”
——–
Maybe people feel the need to bring it up repeatedly because that’s the only right thing within their power to do.
One of my co-workers used to ask why waste time impeaching President Clinton when he will never ever be punished, not even if he’s found guilty, which would never happen anyway.
My answer is, because if we DON’T talk about it, if we DON’T say it from the highest mountain or a milk crate on a New York City street, then it will never be known what went down.
We can’t all be in the Senate to cast our vote on impeachment. There are only 100 people who can do that. But we sure as hell can (and should) discuss it in the open, in the public square, on the radio, in the newspapers, and all over the internet.
So please don’t scold us. Talking and debating is important too.
If you want to talk about something useful, talk about the corruption. Link that to the corruption in the rest of the country.
Baldwin’s treatment ain’t the disease, it’s merely a symptom.
Or, you know, we can keep doing what’s been failing for a century and just hope for a different outcome.
Frankly, this has been my biggest beef with the US for a long time. I prefer my corruption to be honest and open. Openly corrupt people are corrupt, sure, but it’s not a secret and no one is surprised by the outcomes which means things are predictable and therefore smoother. The price of the corruption is also lower.
This is not the case in the US, which means that it’s more expensive and a hell of a lot more powerful. Which is made all the worse by the public essentially denying that the country is really rather corrupt on multiple levels.
As usual, the most dangerous deception is self-deception and we Americans are absolute pros at that.
I know people on this film – Baldwin is a total narcissistic ass but he had nothing to do with running this set. Carpenter has no idea what he is saying. Baldwin was an actor on this set and did what actors do. His role as a PRODUCER was in name only – to get the investors in on the front end and to get paid on the back end. He didn’t make ANY decisions on this film. He didn’t hire people and he didn’t decide to keep going the day the crew left. These decisions were made by the line producer, the UPM, the AD and the director — Baldwin had very little clue of what was going on.
Give a monkey a gun and the monkey shoots someone you dont blame the monkey. The end.
Rule 1: Treat every gun as if it is loaded – violated
Rule 2: Do not muzzle anything you are not willing to destroy – violated
Rule 3: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot – violated
Rule 4: Know your target, and what is in line with your target – violated
Had he NOT violated just ONE of those rules there would have been no death/injury on the set. JUST ONE.
There was nothing wrong with that firearm! Pietta single-action revolves are well made and reliable revolvers. They will not discharge unless the trigger is pulled! There was incredible negligence by Baldwin, inexcusable and it cost an innocent young life!
I don’t care what the make and model is all I have seen, photos and video show Baldwin unable to keep his finger off of the trigger that he has already pulled. Even in his own defense he pulls the same trigger in evidence from the court.
Exactly. I propose a 5th safety rule:
#5 If your finger is on the trigger, you are pulling the trigger.
There is no difference in these days of trigger weights measured in ounces.
So keep your bogger hook off the bang switch unless you’re actually shooting!