I haven’t touched a gun in a decade. When I did, it was an unloaded demo beretta used by the navy.
When commenting on the Internet about safe gun handling in regards to the Alec Baldwin trial, I professed “Well, safe gun handling is not always obvious for all firearms. For instance, the methods to safely handle and unload an old fashioned revolver, the kind often on TV, when it’s already loaded and its hammer is back, is ridiculously complicated. Only a professional should handle that.”
This comment resulted in a reply from a gun nut insisting I was a moron, and had no idea what I was talking about. Feeling 80% sure of my knowledge of revolvers, I looked it up on YouTube, and boosted it to 100%.
To explain: If a revolver’s hammer is cocked, the cylinder is locked and you can’t just open it to take out the bullets. Plus, any gentle trigger motion or even hard knock will loosen the hammer and fire the bullet (supposedly, some newer revolvers are safer, but these don’t show up on TV shows). The stupid thing is, there’s no special switch or motion to release the hammer in a clear, safe way. So, the only way to unload the gun starts with blocking the hammer with a finger, then pulling the trigger, releasing it. Then you can open the cylinder.
But the aggravating headline was me, a pure gun commenter who only knows about them from video games and internet debates, knowing more about their safety than a self-professed gun nut.
B) Don’t touch a real gun capable of firing real bullets unless you know how to (or have someone to instruct you on how to) do so safely with that firearm.
C) All guns are always loaded.
D) Never point your muzzle at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
E) Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot
F) Know what is in the foreground and background of your shot.
G) Don’t be the producer of the show letting all this unsafe shit happen
H) Don’t say “I’m just an actor, I can’t be expected to learn” as a piss poor excuse. I taught an 18yo kid (new employee) the safety rules last week and he got it, you telling me some kid is just smarter than any actor other than Keanu Reeves? No, Baldwin didn’t want to learn, and this is what happens. Guns aren’t toys and shouldn’t be treated as such even between shots on a set.
With today’s video technology, I don’t see a reason to use real guns that can fire real bullets at all on movie sets. A realistic looking replica should be enough. Anything else can be added in post (like sounds or flashes) or acted (like recoil). It could have a mechanism to shoot empty shells out the side or otherwise behave like a real gun for everything other than being able to fire bullets or blanks (which can also be dangerous, though perhaps a blank shooting gun could be designed to mitigate those dangers).
I agree. And those blank firing guns already exist and would be mostly fine, the dangers are already pretty low especially for semi-autos which require a barrel plug to cycle with blanks, revolvers however do not. The dangers with blanks are often overstated because of a misunderstanding of what happened to Brandon Lee, IRL they could potentially hurt you if the little bits of brass from the crimp hit your eye, which would totally suck but you’d live, or if the barrel is too close the pressure could kill you (but like, we’re talking execution style to the temple here, 3ft+ of distance mitigates the pressure dangers). They’d still be a little dangerous but nowhere near live rounds lol.
(What happened to brandon lee is a bullet got stuck inside the barrel and nobody noticed, and then a blank pushed it out when fired. That’s a whole 'nother thing, and the armorer in that case fucked up a completely different way making props which anyone with a lee press and a flat punch could have done safely, that one was squarely on him.)
What I described is a problem with B. On a set, there are also problems with D, and E.
Even with brief safety lessons, I would not want/require every actor to ever touch a gun to know the insane revolver process described above in which you must pull the trigger to safely unload a gun and make it safe - and to check that the blank rounds are actually blank. If a “gun nut” didn’t know that process, there are liable to be countless other processes an actor won’t know.
Additionally, guns are used on set for dramatic effect. Actors WILL point guns at other actors for the sake of a shot, and WILL have their finger on the trigger to make their character seem real mean. So D and E, while good lessons, must be suspended on TV sets.
All the rest of the lessons are for the arms master of a set to handle. They are the ones that should be ensuring weapons anywhere near a set are loaded with blanks only when needed, and all otherwise follows full safety precautions. Hence why my opinion on blame for that incident was on Baldwin as the producer responsible for negligently hiring a shitty arms handler, not on Baldwin as the person holding the gun that went off.
If they can’t handle learning safety with a real gun, they don’t get no real gun, simple as. They aren’t toys. It doesn’t matter how widely known the operation of X specific gun is, if you’re holding that gun, you need to know how to operate that gun safely, he doesn’t need to know everything about everything, just the one he is operating. Anything less is just unsafe and could lead to things like camera people being shot in between takes.
And with camera magic usually you can point them off to the side a little and still make it look like it’s pointed at the other person, or for this shot (which was actually just him fucking around in between takes), they could have left the camera running, had the op walk away, and then had him walk up and shoot an empty camera seat which through the magic of editing could be cut down to the shot you need since film isn’t even film anymore (digital these days.) Or y’know just not use a real gun capable of firing live rounds.
They’re also lessons for Producer Alec Baldwin, who, whether he is just a stupid actor who can’t be expected to learn something which it sounds like took you a five minute youtube video to learn (you must be a genius if you can handle it but Alec Baldwin Producer cannot), or not, someone died because he was playing with guns, and people only excuse it because he’s famous. You wouldn’t say “well why would he be expected to know about guns, he’s a plumber not an armorer” if your plumber uncle was playing with guns and shot his friend, but Alec “Millionaire Producer” Baldwin is cool because “he’s too dumb to learn anything.”
Like it or not he is at least partially culpable, and he’s going to have to live with that for the rest of his life. He can make all the excuses he wants but deep down he has to know.
As I mentioned, I held a gun long ago handed to me by a marine doing a demo on a decommissioned carrier. He did not give me any kind of extensive training in the safety of the 92FS or any cautions about edge case safety concerns. I didn’t check the chamber, or know how to. In holding it horizontally within a metal ship, it’s not impossible that a misfire from the direction I held it could have ricocheted off walls and hurt someone. While I knew not to touch the trigger, he didn’t instruct me as such.
The Marine did, however, know that no live ammo was being brought onto the boat, and that he’d personally checked that the weapon was unloaded before handing it to me - just so I could see how much it weighed.
Was that tiny incident irresponsible on MY part? I would argue no. There are responsibilities carried by gun users and owners, and only some of those pass on depending on the environment the gun’s handler sets.
As I mentioned, I held a gun long ago handed to me by a marine doing a demo on a decommissioned carrier. He did not give me any kind of extensive training in the safety of the 92FS or any cautions about edge case safety concerns. I didn’t check the chamber, or know how to. In holding it horizontally within a metal ship, it’s not impossible that a misfire from the direction I held it could have ricocheted off walls and hurt someone. While I knew not to touch the trigger, he didn’t instruct me as such.
Just because you and some guy who eats crayons didn’t observe gun safety properly on a boat one time doesn’t mean gun safety isn’t important, accidents happen when people get complacent like that and can happen at any “skill” level or whatever you want to call it. He was wrong not to show you and insist on safety, and frankly you should always ask “how do I clear this” when touching a gun you don’t know how to use.
I’m literally shitting in a gun store as I write this and when I walked by the FFL desks otw to the shitters they had something out I wanted to check out, so I walked up to the guy holding it, said “ooh lemme see,” he made sure it was clear in front of me, passed it to me, I double checked, and then proceeded to check out this weird ass gun, handed it back and said “alright shittin’ time.” That is proper procedure, any less can 100% get you fired from here and we literally had a meeting where we told everyone this about 6mo ago, anyone who doesn’t know how to use them has two options,
A) Don’t.
B) Get with the FFL manager for a lesson and he’ll test you on it after.
The Marine did, however, know that no live ammo was being brought onto the boat, and that he’d personally checked that the weapon was unloaded before handing it to me - just so I could see how much it weighed.
Yes yes and the Bubba in my shop with a loaded rifle last week said the same thing, but we racked the charging handle because we always check, popped a live round out, gave him a tsk tsk, and handed him back his round. No live ammo allowed when bringing shit in to get work done.
Was that tiny incident irresponsible on MY part?
A little, yeah. I don’t know shit about chainsaws but I know enough to know I shouldn’t be fucking with them. If I’m gonna touch one I’m damn sure asking someone who does know “how do I use this thing safely” first, even if it’s a demo with the chain removed.
The marine definitely bears more responsibility, but also to his slight credit there was supposed to be no live ammo “on set” (the boat) as opposed to Producer Alec Baldwin’s set where they were plinking at cans on set in between takes which requires live ammo on set, yet still he should have insisted, or used a chamber flag that indicates an unloaded firearm and takes up the space of the chamber (many guns ship this way, I can check our Baretta 92s if you want to see if they do, but we also sell a 5 pack for $3), and you should always insist yourself so that you don’t accidentally shoot someone while holding a gun even if whoever handed it to you said “it’s totally empty bro trust me,” never trust those people, they’re the gun equivalent of “don’t worry, you don’t need a condom,” you doubly so do whenever someone says that.
I have a little bit of a story in gun safety.
I haven’t touched a gun in a decade. When I did, it was an unloaded demo beretta used by the navy.
When commenting on the Internet about safe gun handling in regards to the Alec Baldwin trial, I professed “Well, safe gun handling is not always obvious for all firearms. For instance, the methods to safely handle and unload an old fashioned revolver, the kind often on TV, when it’s already loaded and its hammer is back, is ridiculously complicated. Only a professional should handle that.”
This comment resulted in a reply from a gun nut insisting I was a moron, and had no idea what I was talking about. Feeling 80% sure of my knowledge of revolvers, I looked it up on YouTube, and boosted it to 100%.
To explain: If a revolver’s hammer is cocked, the cylinder is locked and you can’t just open it to take out the bullets. Plus, any gentle trigger motion or even hard knock will loosen the hammer and fire the bullet (supposedly, some newer revolvers are safer, but these don’t show up on TV shows). The stupid thing is, there’s no special switch or motion to release the hammer in a clear, safe way. So, the only way to unload the gun starts with blocking the hammer with a finger, then pulling the trigger, releasing it. Then you can open the cylinder.
But the aggravating headline was me, a pure gun commenter who only knows about them from video games and internet debates, knowing more about their safety than a self-professed gun nut.
This is why you
A) Don’t have live ammo on set at all,
B) Don’t touch a real gun capable of firing real bullets unless you know how to (or have someone to instruct you on how to) do so safely with that firearm.
C) All guns are always loaded.
D) Never point your muzzle at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
E) Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot
F) Know what is in the foreground and background of your shot.
G) Don’t be the producer of the show letting all this unsafe shit happen
H) Don’t say “I’m just an actor, I can’t be expected to learn” as a piss poor excuse. I taught an 18yo kid (new employee) the safety rules last week and he got it, you telling me some kid is just smarter than any actor other than Keanu Reeves? No, Baldwin didn’t want to learn, and this is what happens. Guns aren’t toys and shouldn’t be treated as such even between shots on a set.
With today’s video technology, I don’t see a reason to use real guns that can fire real bullets at all on movie sets. A realistic looking replica should be enough. Anything else can be added in post (like sounds or flashes) or acted (like recoil). It could have a mechanism to shoot empty shells out the side or otherwise behave like a real gun for everything other than being able to fire bullets or blanks (which can also be dangerous, though perhaps a blank shooting gun could be designed to mitigate those dangers).
I agree. And those blank firing guns already exist and would be mostly fine, the dangers are already pretty low especially for semi-autos which require a barrel plug to cycle with blanks, revolvers however do not. The dangers with blanks are often overstated because of a misunderstanding of what happened to Brandon Lee, IRL they could potentially hurt you if the little bits of brass from the crimp hit your eye, which would totally suck but you’d live, or if the barrel is too close the pressure could kill you (but like, we’re talking execution style to the temple here, 3ft+ of distance mitigates the pressure dangers). They’d still be a little dangerous but nowhere near live rounds lol.
(What happened to brandon lee is a bullet got stuck inside the barrel and nobody noticed, and then a blank pushed it out when fired. That’s a whole 'nother thing, and the armorer in that case fucked up a completely different way making props which anyone with a lee press and a flat punch could have done safely, that one was squarely on him.)
What I described is a problem with B. On a set, there are also problems with D, and E.
Even with brief safety lessons, I would not want/require every actor to ever touch a gun to know the insane revolver process described above in which you must pull the trigger to safely unload a gun and make it safe - and to check that the blank rounds are actually blank. If a “gun nut” didn’t know that process, there are liable to be countless other processes an actor won’t know.
Additionally, guns are used on set for dramatic effect. Actors WILL point guns at other actors for the sake of a shot, and WILL have their finger on the trigger to make their character seem real mean. So D and E, while good lessons, must be suspended on TV sets.
All the rest of the lessons are for the arms master of a set to handle. They are the ones that should be ensuring weapons anywhere near a set are loaded with blanks only when needed, and all otherwise follows full safety precautions. Hence why my opinion on blame for that incident was on Baldwin as the producer responsible for negligently hiring a shitty arms handler, not on Baldwin as the person holding the gun that went off.
If they can’t handle learning safety with a real gun, they don’t get no real gun, simple as. They aren’t toys. It doesn’t matter how widely known the operation of X specific gun is, if you’re holding that gun, you need to know how to operate that gun safely, he doesn’t need to know everything about everything, just the one he is operating. Anything less is just unsafe and could lead to things like camera people being shot in between takes.
And with camera magic usually you can point them off to the side a little and still make it look like it’s pointed at the other person, or for this shot (which was actually just him fucking around in between takes), they could have left the camera running, had the op walk away, and then had him walk up and shoot an empty camera seat which through the magic of editing could be cut down to the shot you need since film isn’t even film anymore (digital these days.) Or y’know just not use a real gun capable of firing live rounds.
They’re also lessons for Producer Alec Baldwin, who, whether he is just a stupid actor who can’t be expected to learn something which it sounds like took you a five minute youtube video to learn (you must be a genius if you can handle it but Alec Baldwin Producer cannot), or not, someone died because he was playing with guns, and people only excuse it because he’s famous. You wouldn’t say “well why would he be expected to know about guns, he’s a plumber not an armorer” if your plumber uncle was playing with guns and shot his friend, but Alec “Millionaire Producer” Baldwin is cool because “he’s too dumb to learn anything.”
Like it or not he is at least partially culpable, and he’s going to have to live with that for the rest of his life. He can make all the excuses he wants but deep down he has to know.
Let me test this standpoint a bit.
As I mentioned, I held a gun long ago handed to me by a marine doing a demo on a decommissioned carrier. He did not give me any kind of extensive training in the safety of the 92FS or any cautions about edge case safety concerns. I didn’t check the chamber, or know how to. In holding it horizontally within a metal ship, it’s not impossible that a misfire from the direction I held it could have ricocheted off walls and hurt someone. While I knew not to touch the trigger, he didn’t instruct me as such.
The Marine did, however, know that no live ammo was being brought onto the boat, and that he’d personally checked that the weapon was unloaded before handing it to me - just so I could see how much it weighed.
Was that tiny incident irresponsible on MY part? I would argue no. There are responsibilities carried by gun users and owners, and only some of those pass on depending on the environment the gun’s handler sets.
Just because you and some guy who eats crayons didn’t observe gun safety properly on a boat one time doesn’t mean gun safety isn’t important, accidents happen when people get complacent like that and can happen at any “skill” level or whatever you want to call it. He was wrong not to show you and insist on safety, and frankly you should always ask “how do I clear this” when touching a gun you don’t know how to use.
I’m literally shitting in a gun store as I write this and when I walked by the FFL desks otw to the shitters they had something out I wanted to check out, so I walked up to the guy holding it, said “ooh lemme see,” he made sure it was clear in front of me, passed it to me, I double checked, and then proceeded to check out this weird ass gun, handed it back and said “alright shittin’ time.” That is proper procedure, any less can 100% get you fired from here and we literally had a meeting where we told everyone this about 6mo ago, anyone who doesn’t know how to use them has two options,
A) Don’t.
B) Get with the FFL manager for a lesson and he’ll test you on it after.
Yes yes and the Bubba in my shop with a loaded rifle last week said the same thing, but we racked the charging handle because we always check, popped a live round out, gave him a tsk tsk, and handed him back his round. No live ammo allowed when bringing shit in to get work done.
A little, yeah. I don’t know shit about chainsaws but I know enough to know I shouldn’t be fucking with them. If I’m gonna touch one I’m damn sure asking someone who does know “how do I use this thing safely” first, even if it’s a demo with the chain removed.
The marine definitely bears more responsibility, but also to his slight credit there was supposed to be no live ammo “on set” (the boat) as opposed to Producer Alec Baldwin’s set where they were plinking at cans on set in between takes which requires live ammo on set, yet still he should have insisted, or used a chamber flag that indicates an unloaded firearm and takes up the space of the chamber (many guns ship this way, I can check our Baretta 92s if you want to see if they do, but we also sell a 5 pack for $3), and you should always insist yourself so that you don’t accidentally shoot someone while holding a gun even if whoever handed it to you said “it’s totally empty bro trust me,” never trust those people, they’re the gun equivalent of “don’t worry, you don’t need a condom,” you doubly so do whenever someone says that.
On a movie set. A should have been obvious as in any professional setting (except the ones that use guns obviously).
If the crew wanted to go plinking at cans they should have just gone to the friendly neighbourhood gun range.
Remember kids, video games love to teach you about how cool guns are but never teach you how to safely handle them.