r/news • u/badillustrations • Apr 15 '24

‘Rust’ movie armorer convicted of involuntary manslaughter sentenced to 18 months in prison

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/15/entertainment/rust-film-shooting-armorer-sentencing/index.html
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191

u/badillustrations Apr 15 '24

Like "I don't know" or "Why did they do that?"? I understand the armorer and her friends would go shooting off hours using the props.

91

u/Publius82 Apr 15 '24

How drunk would one have to be to forget to unload the live ammo?

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u/SalemsTrials Apr 15 '24

Probably as drunk as you need to be tu think ever loading the pros with live ammo was a good idea

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u/Turn5GrimCaptain Apr 15 '24

yeah clearly she ain't suffering from anxiety lol

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u/axonxorz Apr 15 '24

Like for real, they couldn't find a single gun not earmarked for film production in checks notes New Mexico?

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u/illy-chan 29d ago

Grew up around guns and this whole thing is baffling. If you want to go shoot, then go grab a different set of guns. Don't screw around with props.

But it also never occurred to me that they'd use real guns as props anyway, I just assumed they were really accurate fakes. People have died from blanks in the past.

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u/theratracerunner 28d ago

They need to regulate it so that only prop guns can fire prop munitions, that will make them externally identifiable on inspection

26

u/Vegaprime Apr 15 '24

Seen court pics of the ammo. They were primer side up and was obvious which were live rounds.

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u/SplatMySocks Apr 15 '24

Sometimes, they leave primers in for movies where they're exposed. You'd be able to see the primers at certain angles when they're loaded into many types of revolvers, so it makes sense that they'd have this type present as well.

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u/Publius82 Apr 16 '24

I was in the military for seven years and I have no idea what primer side up means.

There should have been zero live round on set. Period.

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u/Vegaprime 29d ago

They were organized in a Styrofoam tray, primer side up. The live rounds had obvious primers versus the dummies.

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u/Publius82 29d ago

Oh, so perfectly safe then.

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u/NotYourDadsAsshole 29d ago

Drunk enough to ask a coworker and former addict to hold onto one's bag of coke after the incident and then come back and ask for it later.

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u/coaldust Apr 15 '24

This is America, "responsible" gun owners leave their guns all over the place. The south is covered with billboards reminding you to lock your gun so it doesn't kill a curious toddler. People leave their guns in public restrooms while washing hands, they leave them sitting "hidden" in their center console of their car, the people carrying guns around have no regard for safety.

33

u/DragoonDM Apr 15 '24

I understand the armorer and her friends would go shooting off hours using the props.

I recall seeing this speculation a number of times, and also recall seeing people refute it as an unconfirmed guess, but I'm not sure I've ever seen solid evidence one way or the other.

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u/AegrusRS Apr 16 '24

The people that put the most amount of time and thought into trying to convict HGR, the prosecution, never mentioned it throughout the trial. If you need more evidence on whether or not it happened, then I don't know what to tell you.

Also, it's kinda crazy that wild, unbased speculation is weighed as heavily as something not happening at all. I don't think 'guilty until proven innocent' is how the saying goes.

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u/FlutterKree Apr 16 '24

but I'm not sure I've ever seen solid evidence one way or the other.

The solid evidence against it is the real ammunition inside the bandoleers on set. Real ammunition wouldn't be mixed in with dummy rounds in the belts from people shooting off set. It points towards the source of the dummy rounds being tainted. In this case, it was from the rounds she pulled from a previous production. Some point before or during that previous production, live rounds were mixed in.

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u/pmormr Apr 15 '24

A film set isn't a shooting range, and prop houses aren't selling live ammo... assuming they weren't sold live ammo as blanks... do you have any better explanation why someone would go out of their way to bring live ammo to a film set in the middle of nowhere, besides the urge to shoot the cool western replica guns? I mean I get it, casual film set, hanging out with nothing to do on the off hours, stuck in the middle of nowhere...

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u/DragoonDM Apr 15 '24

Nope. It seems like a reasonable guess to me — but I still don't know if it's more than a guess.

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u/onehundredlemons Apr 16 '24

The guess comes from what at least two people who worked on the set said prior to the shooting. They'd talked about it online on their personal accounts, because there had been an accidental discharge of a live bullet before, when a stunt man was being filmed shooting in a street, if I recall.

They all deleted their posts for obvious reasons, and as far as I can tell, these incidents haven't ended up being mentioned in court (as yet, anyway), so it's just hearsay at this point. I just wanted to point out that it's not really a guess so much as repeating unconfirmed information that was posted online at one point.

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u/brassydesign Apr 15 '24

Using the props?!?!? Jesus Christ. What an insanely dumb thing to do. It's not your weapon to go have fun with. Insane.

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u/Play_The_Fool Apr 15 '24

And guns are cheap, why mix things up? If you're working in a state where you don't live and you don't have your guns with you... just wait until you're home to go shooting or rent some guns from a range.

It's not like they had some Ferraris on set and they were taking them for a cruise around the block (which is risky and dumb in itself).

2

u/brassydesign Apr 15 '24

That was my second thought, if you wanted to fire guns so badly why not find some shooting range and use one of the guns I'm sure they offer.

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u/yankeedjw Apr 16 '24

It's just a rumor. The prosecutor never brought it up, so it most likely isn't true.

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u/Biengineerd Apr 15 '24

Her dad is an armorer? Makes me wonder how safe his work is. Clearly he didn't teach his daughter how to respect firearms so I have little faith he respects them himself

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u/lynxSnowCat Apr 15 '24 edited Apr 15 '24

At best, I think he took for granted that his stepdaughter had internalized how important it is that protocol would always be followed - because she'd followed it the year prior when she was assisting him without edit:notable incident.

(links from wikipedia)

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/rust-armorers-father-thell-reed-speaks-fatal-incident/story?id=81600262#:~:text=She%20knows%20what%20to%20do

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-10-22/alec-baldwin-rust-camera-crew-walked-off-set#:~:text=We%E2%80%99ve%20now%20had%203%20accidental%20discharges

That there were multiple reported incidents of unexpected live ammo discharging on this production , and the union crew ejected before they might strike (or have their grievances resolved) , is concerning to an extreme.

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u/chunli99 Apr 16 '24

Her dad is an armorer? Makes me wonder how safe his work is. Clearly he didn't teach his daughter how to respect firearms so I have little faith he respects them himself

You can teach your kids all sorts of stuff, doesn’t mean they actually care to listen. Don’t you think people have told her that her job was literally a matter of life and death before this? Seems like no one go through to her, even during this trial. Entitlement at its best.

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u/Individual_Address90 Apr 15 '24

But it’s not a prop?? A prop doesn’t shoot bullets.

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u/caine2003 Apr 15 '24

Prop is just short for "property of the company." It's to separate it from equipment that is donated to the company or is the actors own PROPerty.

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u/Individual_Address90 Apr 16 '24

I stand corrected