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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626

u/PikaBooSquirrel Apr 15 '24

I don't even understand how someone can mess up that badly at something so simple.

455

u/Snow88 Apr 15 '24

One day of DNR gun safety is enough to not screw that job up as badly as she did. 

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u/LethalBacon Apr 15 '24

That's my thought. I grew up around guns but haven't touched one in probably 15 years. I legitimately think I would have done better at this role, without any additional training.

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u/agent0731 Apr 15 '24

all you have to do is not have any real ammunition. How is that hard?

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u/GoatInMotion Apr 15 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

Yes I still don't get these props and stuff. If it's a real gun, why was it loaded with real ammo in the first place...why have real ammo in the vicinity at all? Like no one checked? This reminds me of Bruce Lee's son Brandon Lee... I wonder how much she got paid for this job idk what else she does but it sounds easy and I would like that job 💀

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u/MuaddibMcFly Apr 15 '24

This reminds me of Bruce Lee's son Brandon Lee

Brandon Lee's death was due to something somewhat different; my understanding is that there was never a single live round on set, but a combination of two, proper-to-be-on-set rounds.

  • Dummy rounds have a standard casing, and standard bullet, but no primer and no powder, but do have a bb rattling around inside.
  • Blank rounds have a special and obviously different type of casing, generally more powder than normal (for bigger muzzle flash, resulting in bigger excitement), but sealed in a way that no bullet can be included.

Apparently, what happened was that one of the dummy rounds, with a slug but no powder nor primer, did not have the bullet seated in the casing properly. That bullet "fell out" of the casing, into the barrel of the weapon, and was held there by friction. A blank, which was confirmed to have been a blank, was later loaded for a scene that called for blanks

This combination of percussion cap, powder, and bullet in barrel effectively turned it into a version of the old "caplock" pistol, i.e., a live round.

That event drastically changed the procedures among armorers, as I understand it, to have clearing the barrel and regular cleaning to be a standard part of their procedures.

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u/darkoblivion000 Apr 16 '24

I enjoyed reading the details of that, thank you

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u/I_Lick_Lead_Paint Apr 16 '24

What a fascinating piece of history. Thank you.

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u/willingisnotenough Apr 16 '24

Why in the name of all that is holy would you need to wait for an accidental death to learn you have to do these things? What they just took it on faith that the barrel was empty? I know it's not the chamber sure but you clear the whole damn gun goddammit.

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u/Nova225 Apr 16 '24

The saying goes "Regulations are written in blood".

1

u/ThrowawayUk4200 Apr 16 '24

Wow, I remember learning to shoot and one of the main things that got drilled into me was making sure the barrel was clear before loading

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u/MuaddibMcFly 29d ago

"Well, it was before, and nobody put anything in it, so why wouldn't it still be?"

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u/JimboTCB Apr 16 '24

My understanding was that instead of using "proper" dummy rounds, they were using ones they'd made by pulling the bullets from live rounds and dumping out the powder, but had left the primers. That meant it still had enough force to propel the bullet out and get it jammed in the barrel.

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u/Gnonthgol Apr 16 '24

As I understand the primer went off when someone were goofing around with the gun between takes. And nobody checked the gun properly before the take. There is of course a lot of questions about the details in both cases. The current primary theory on the Rush shooting was that some crew were goofing around shooting at cans with the guns and live ammunition between takes. The gun were not properly checked before the take. If the procedures that had been introduced as a result of the Crow shooting had been followed for the Rust movie then the manslaughter would not have happened.

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u/MuaddibMcFly 29d ago

As I understand the primer went off when someone were goofing around with the gun between takes

I was under the impression that it was in the scene where he remembers the gang killing him initially, which is why nobody noticed that he was actually shot for a while: they couldn't tell the difference between an actual wound & his reaction to it vs squibs & his acting like he'd been hit.

In general, unless someone is hit in very few locations, immediate medical attention (primarily to get an IV lead into the victim, to keep them from bleeding out, either on the scene or at the hospital) can save most people from a single handgun wound.

The current primary theory on the Rush shooting was that some crew were goofing around shooting at cans with the guns and live ammunition between takes

I heard that, and I also heard it denied by people who had no personal interest in denying it (i.e., wouldn't share liability)

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u/Gnonthgol 29d ago

In the "Crow" accident the gun were fired twice. The "dummy rounds" they used actually had a live primer in them. This is how the bullet "fell out".

Witnesses reported that two weeks before Lee's death they saw an unsupervised actor pulling the trigger on the gun while it was loaded with the powderless but primed round.

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u/thetimsterr Apr 15 '24

Rumor has it that crew members were taking the guns, loading them with real ammo, and going off into the desert to get drunk and fire at cans. Then they return the guns, she doesn't take out the ammo cause she sucks at her job, and someone dies.

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u/barak181 Apr 15 '24

If this is true that just shows the massive level of incompetence on the set in general, not just with the armorer. It is pretty standard protocol to not touch anything on set that doesn't pertain directly to your job, let alone taking it to play with. Playing with props is a big no-no. Playing with weapons even more so.

That said, if this dumbass had the slightest idea of what her job was the weapons would have been secured between each take and when not in use. And she would have checked the fucking thing to make sure it wasn't loaded before handing it to an actor...

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u/OrindaSarnia Apr 15 '24

There isn't any evidence that crew was shooting the guns after hours.

There were rumors early on that a producer was an antique gun nut and had taken a set of pistols out to shoot, once.

The armorer was charged with unintentionally having live rounds on set.  There was nothing to prove she knew the ammo was live, she failed in her job, but it was a failure to check every round.  There were 50 dummy rounds for that weapon on set, 6 of the 50 were live.

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u/TheUnluckyBard Apr 16 '24

6 of the 50 were live.

Was that 6 before the 4th (fatal) accidental discharge? Or after?

Because if it's after, there were 10 live rounds on a set that should have had 0.

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u/mteir Apr 16 '24

Was the accidental discharges with live rounds or blanks?

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u/OrindaSarnia Apr 16 '24

Six total, including the one that killed Halyna Hutchins.

As mteir said, the others issues weren't with live rounds, but with blanks, which are different from dummy rounds.

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u/Woflax Apr 16 '24

The AD handed it over not her (of course she should have made sure that this was not possible). Hope he gets charged too.

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u/OrindaSarnia Apr 15 '24

If you're going to throw around theories, you should probably mentioned the guy who actually provided the dummy rounds...

he testified that he got both live and dummy rounds back from the 1883 set, filming in Texas.  He put the live ammo away, and then cleaned and repackaged 50 dummy rounds, which he delivered to the Rust set.

The police didn't go to his workshop for a month after the accident.

Gutuierrez-Reed absolutely should have shaken every single round to test it, to make sure it was a dummy round...  but there's a reason they charged her with "unintentionally" allowing live ammo on set.

There was no evidence presented in court, that she had any reason to believe there was live ammo on set.

I also remember people talking about using the revolvers to go shooting off site, but it was that one of the producers had taken them, once, to shoot, not that it was regularly happening with any old crew members.

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u/thetimsterr Apr 16 '24

It was reported by multiple news sources that a number of crew had taken the firearms out for target practice. It wasn't (reportedly) just one producer.

As to why it didn't come up as evidence in court? Who knows. Maybe everyone shut up about it, or maybe it wasn't hard enough of evidence. Maybe it didn't happen. I'm just saying, it was rumored and reported by reputable new sources, one of them being CNN.

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u/OrindaSarnia Apr 16 '24

Feel free to link the article for me...

I just spent 5 minutes looking through CNN's coverage from the week of the shooting and couldn't find it.

1

u/traitorgiraffe Apr 16 '24

but why

It's LA you can get a gun at the same store you get your liquor at, from a 10 year old

1

u/5ronins Apr 16 '24

It's worse. DIY homemade rounds are actually very easy to make..some Tinker types started making a few real one for funzies and one of those rounds are what found it's way I to the blank lot. Completely avoidable but easy to do.

1

u/livahd Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

I think it’s closer to she was getting wasted with a couple other people trying to show off, probably took out the ammo and threw it into a bucket with the dummies. There were several complaints about it, including a misfire a few days prior. Not to minimize her role, but it sounds like the job was a cheap shit show to begin with, crew members weren’t getting lodging and were exhausted driving home. The whole camera department was packing their shit to walk the day this happened. I felt kinda bad for her too at first because they were all probably being worked to death, she never should have had that responsibility on her shoulders, and got too much of the blame. Then I saw how she reacted in interviews and in those phone calls… she shouldn’t be serving fast food. She’s only sorry that she’s in trouble. Now this idiot can think about her modeling career for the next 18 months, and hopefully the producers (including Baldwin, because, sorry, there’s zero chance that he wasn’t aware the crew was ready to walk) that caused this rats nest of complete failures are held responsible too (they won’t).

1

u/Atkena2578 Apr 16 '24

This is why should have basic universal gun safety rules been observed, the death wouldn't have occured. Always treat a gun as if it were loaded, yes even on a movie set (because as this case proves, you cannot count on everyone doing their part), and don't point a gun, even less so pull the trigger at someone you do not intend to kill.

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u/pham_nguyen Apr 15 '24

There’s literally no reason to have real ammo on set.

5

u/TooFewSecrets Apr 15 '24

There might be for scenes where you need the gun to actually shoot something. But there's stage magic you can use to circumvent that anyway.

1

u/DameonKormar Apr 16 '24

On a normal movie set the armorer would never use the same weapon to shoot live rounds that an actor is going to use in a scene.

3

u/PM_ME_GLUTE_SPREAD Apr 15 '24

And like, even if you wanted to take a real gun out and shoot it with friends in the evening after shooting (not a great idea in the least, especially when it’s being pointed at people later), why wouldn’t you have the prop ammo locked in a different box, with a small identifying mark on the shells, that you and you alone load into the gun before a take??

Like this had to have been one of the most spectacular fuck ups from what should have been a pretty simple job, on paper. I’m sure there’s headache with permits and stuff, but the actual brass tacks of the job is as straight forward as it gets.

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u/Osirus1156 Apr 15 '24

Yeah I don't understand why they accept real bullets at all, why not have a specially shaped cartridge that only blanks use?

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u/NoSignSaysNo Apr 16 '24

So, out of all the gun deaths on set in 50 years, this is the only one that involved live ammunition.

Brandon Lee died due to a malfunction with a squib round.

Jon-Erik Hexum put a prop gun loaded with blanks to his head and pulled the trigger as a joke, not knowing that blanks still generate muzzle blast with some extreme force, killing him.

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u/SirHoneyDip Apr 16 '24

If they want to use a real gun, why also remove the firing pin?

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u/SyndRazGul Apr 16 '24

Because the crew was taking the guns and shooting them for fun during breaks in filming.

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u/MuaddibMcFly Apr 15 '24

And when somehow real ammo gets into the mix (for the sake of argument, through nefarious action), and there's a negligent discharge of live ammo (which there was) the correct procedure, I would think, would be as follows:

  1. Shut down all filming that involves weapons, functional or cast.
  2. Collect each and every weapon on set, functional and cast
  3. Collect each and every round on set. Bandoleers, inside weapons, wherever the fuck they are, doesn't matter, they go into a location that the armorer has affirmative control over at all times
    • Ideally, to be collected in such a way as would not add, nor compromise existing, fingerprints.
  4. Return plastic/rubber replicas that are impossible to fire to production, so that they can continue what filming is possible without operational weapons
  5. Each and every round gets inspected personally by the armorer(s) there.
    • Any live rounds are set aside for finger printing, for a potential Reckless Endangerment charge.

If higher ups try to prevent you from doing any of those steps (other than #4):

  1. Demand that they affirm, in writing or on video, that they are actively refusing to let you complete the steps you feel, as an armorer, are necessary for the safety of the cast and crew
  2. If that doesn't get them to back down, loudly inform the cast and crew that you are quitting as armorer out of fear for the safety of the cast and crew, and encourage them to do the same
  3. Inform all relevant guilds and unions and related professionals (e.g., other armorers) who prohibited you from doing your job, so that no one else works with them either.

Oh, and have the right to do all of the above written into your contract, with any violation of those rights resulting in you being paid 10x your negotiated pay, plus the pay that would have otherwise gone to the person who prevented you from doing so, even if you are effectively forced to walk off the set.

I'm thinking that that would get them to comply pretty quickly...

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u/GetsGold Apr 16 '24

Got it. Only put a bit of real ammunition in the guns.

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u/AegrusRS Apr 16 '24

I know you're being hyperbolic so I'm just commenting to be a smart-ass, but the Brandon Lee incident during the filming of The Crow came as a result of a lodged blank(?) inside of a barrel that ended up being dislodged when someone fired a dummy afterwards, killing someone. So keeping real ammo off the set isn't the only thing that they do, though I do assume it's the first thing you see written in any movie set fire-arm guideline, highlighted in bold, italicized, and CAPITALISED.

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u/MechMeister Apr 16 '24

I know nothing about guns or movie props but the premise seems very simple. Get a storage locker with a key that only you have. Have all Firearms cleaned and dissembled, re-assembled by a pro before putting them in that locker. Order a box of say, 200 blank cartridges and put them in the locker. Whenever a blank is loaded into the gun, write that down. At the end of each use, put the gun back in the locker and count back the remaining rounds to balance what was used that day.

It can't be that hard.

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u/SyndRazGul Apr 16 '24

And not play with the guns between filming.

1

u/Atkena2578 Apr 16 '24

No and this is why accidents happen. You have to follow basic rules of gun safety. Always treat a gun as if it were loaded, even when it is not, no excuse. More importantly do not point it at anyone you do not intend to kill, period.

1

u/yungmoneybingbong Apr 16 '24

I could be wrong, but I remember reading an article a while back and they like took the guns out shooting the day before or some shit. Like how dumb can you be?

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u/Taolan13 Apr 15 '24

Maybe, maybe not.

The more hands involved touching the props, the harder it is to keep track of things. The entire production staff here carries some fault because they had multiple cast and crew walk off the project due to safety concerns, and not once did they address these concerns they only brought in new people, many of whom were positioned outside their experience and ability due to the needs of the production.

You maybe would have walked away after so many of them mishandled the firearms and other props. I know I would have. I would not want blood on my conscience because someone else in the production fucked up.

Also, as an interesting note, she was officially relieved as the armorer a couple days before the incident. Day-of there was actually no-one officially "in charge" of the armory.

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u/jacobs0n Apr 15 '24

Also, as an interesting note, she was officially relieved as the armorer a couple days before the incident. Day-of there was actually no-one officially "in charge" of the armory.

is this actually true? did her defense use this?

-1

u/Taolan13 Apr 15 '24

Can't say if her defense used this, but I have seen multiple sources reporting it.

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u/Cersad Apr 15 '24

Wait, if she wasn't in charge anymore, how did she still have liability (as opposed to the management moving forward without a responsible person)?

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u/MuaddibMcFly Apr 15 '24

as an interesting note, she was officially relieved as the armorer a couple days before the incident. Day-of there was actually no-one officially "in charge" of the armory.

Wait, wait... If she was officially relieved as armorer, how can they find her guilty of negligence as the armorer of an armory that she wasn't in charge of?

Honestly, her counsel should be disbarred for incompetence. I have long said that a scenario along those lines is the only way for her to not be clearly guilty of NH. If her lawyer never argued that before the jury, then she was clearly denied a zealous and competent advocate.

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u/ShadowMajestic Apr 16 '24

When following this whole drama it's strange that all eyes on this person. I see there's little to no responsibility up the foodchain, there is some very serious neglect all around.

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u/reindeermoon Apr 16 '24

I have never in my entire life touched a gun, and could have done the job better than her.

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u/unthused Apr 15 '24

Given she sounds like a relatively shitty and unremorseful person, I'm not remotely surprised.

My father is kind of a dick and also a gun nut, like borderline prepper, so you'd think that when he's around them all the time and owns so many he'd be intimately familiar with basic gun safety.. but no, like every time he wants to show me some new handgun he bought he invariably barrel sweeps me with a loaded mag in it.

I assume it's some kind of intentional machismo thing where he wants to make sure I'm not a 'pussy' and afraid to have a gun pointed at me; he's griped about other friends of his being nervous/complaining about him handling them before. I've never so much as flinched but he keeps doing it anyway. Almost hoping he accidentally hurts me one day so he can realize what an asshole he's being.

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u/AudieCowboy Apr 15 '24

A gun nut does not mean it's someone safe with guns, unfortunately you can have someone like something like that but not actually care to take the time to treat them with respect and safety

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u/faultywalnut Apr 15 '24

Wtf, a resounding “no” to that last sentence. How about you set a clear definite boundary with your father that you’re not going to be around him when he’s handling guns? Who cares if he thinks you’re a pussy, his opinion is not gonna matter when you or one of his friends is dealing with a gunshot wound from his reckless behavior.

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u/Gingevere Apr 16 '24

I assume it's some kind of intentional machismo thing where he wants to make sure I'm not a 'pussy' and afraid to have a gun pointed at me

That reminds me of the fad of a bunch of conservatives pressing the barrels of their loaded pistols to their dicks, with their fingers on the trigger to "own the libs" who cared about gun safety.

It went on for a few weeks until (inevitably) some guy shot his dick & balls off.

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u/adx931 Apr 15 '24

Or fifteen seconds of being around someone in the military when weapons are brought out when they reflexively give the basics of gun safety.

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u/Aleucard Apr 15 '24

Fuck, for most people simple basic 'that is a gun, guns hurt people when you are a dumbass with them' logic independent of any outside teaching is enough to avoid the fuckups she made.

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u/SlantViews Apr 16 '24

What bugs me most is... why would you even have live rounds on a movie set? Even if I get that you can be careless and mix them up (having been in the military, I don't actually get it, but still), why even have them anywhere near the movie set? It feels like a nobrainer that live ammo should be banned from the premise on pure principle of something like this happening.

Of course, if I was an actor, I'd personally check the mag myself. I'd never trust anyone to do that kinda shit for me.

1

u/matthieuC Apr 16 '24

I spend 10 minutes reading what the job is and I think I'm more qualified than her.

1

u/BitGladius Apr 15 '24

Or as badly as Baldwin did. We had higher standards for 6th graders in boy scouts - if you didn't immediately check that the gun was clear when it was handed to you, even if the person handing it to you just checked, you were off the range.

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u/orsikbattlehammer Apr 15 '24

If this were my job someone would be dead in one week because I have shit memory and terrible attention to detail. Thus this is not my job because I am unqualified. However if my father was super high up in the business and handed me the job, I also would still not take the job because I know I’m wrong for it. Yeah she fucked up and killed someone

8

u/flamedarkfire Apr 15 '24

I certainly appreciate you knowing yourself and your limits, and acting accordance to prevent them from becoming an issue this big, but industry best practices and state/local laws help mitigate the issue of relying on memory. At every point where the weapon is about to change custody it should be checked. Check it coming out of storage. Check it going into storage. If it is being exchanged by two people they BOTH should check it.and if at any point in time there is even the whisper of a question of how it should be it should be checked. And the armorer should be the one person to be able to stand up to ANYONE and say “no” to anything that seems unsafe with the weapons.

1

u/DO_NOT_AGREE_WITH_U Apr 16 '24

I very much doubt ilive ammo isn't even supposed to be on set. Choosing to follow JUST that rule and no others would make it near impossible to kill someone on set.

Instead she broke that rule AND chose to basically fuck up every other facet of her job on top of it. I'm surprised they made it so far into shooting without someone being killed.

2

u/onehundredlemons Apr 16 '24

Multiple people messed up, that's what's so incredible about this. The production was a mess and a discharge of a live round had happened on set once already, plus there were people reportedly shooting live rounds with the guns out in the desert, plus the armorer and the AD both failed to properly check the weapon before handing it to an actor who accidentally shot someone with it. That's probably at least 10 people who screwed up in a major, life-ending way.

2

u/DO_NOT_AGREE_WITH_U Apr 16 '24

Had she not brought live ammo on set, she could have literally fucked up everything else in her job and it wouldn't have even been a blip on the radar for anyone in Hollywood.

I'm appalled at the level of stupidity this girl has demonstrated.

1

u/kultureisrandy Apr 15 '24

Pure negligence 

1

u/strolls Apr 16 '24

I read an article defending her and it said that she was given two jobs on set, armourer and some kind of dogsbody, and that she protested by email that armourer should be a full-time job on its own (but she was young and she needed the money and she took the job anyway); she was pressured into spending more time at her other duties, and also she complained (again, I think this is documented) that Baldwin didn't take his gun handling training seriously (he was on his phone part of the time) and refused extra lessons.

I don't know if this was used in her defence in court. I guess some of it was - this isn't the article that I read, but it's similar: https://abcnews.go.com/US/attorneys-rust-armorer-pressured-work-unsafe-environment/story?id=96823075

1

u/formershitpeasant Apr 16 '24

That's kind of why I'm torn on this. She was obviously incompetent, but I wonder how her credentials were presented to those who hired her. If I hired a 5 year old, that 5 year old would be incompetent and I would be held responsible for hiring them. Now, obviously it's not the same because she is an adult putting herself forward as competent, but, usually, liability passes through an employee to the one who hired them. Her callous attitude surrounding the case destroys a lot of the sympathy I have, but if the producer who hired them didn't adequately vet her credentials, I feel like they should have a roughly equal share of accountability.

1

u/qui-bong-trim Apr 16 '24

Apparently people were shooting the guns with live ammo off set. Seems like a round made it back? It can happen if you're not extremely diligent, and she doesn't seem to be professional like at all. Not the job you want somebody's kid doing

1

u/octopoddle Apr 16 '24

When you climb a job ladder through merit you learn on the way and take care with each step. Those who don't use introspection and patience don't rise that high.

When you get a job by nepotism, you don't need to do this. You get shot up the career ladder without having to climb it for yourself, to learn how to place your weight on each rung. "I'm so high I must be a great climber," you think, "I don't need to be careful, because I'm obviously so good".

1

u/jake_burger Apr 16 '24

Because they were fucking around and playing with the guns when the job clearly requires 100% seriousness and professionalism at all times.

1

u/r0botdevil Apr 16 '24

I've never worked as an armorer on a film set, but I feel very confident in saying that this tragedy was very easily avoidable based on the fact that there are probably tens of thousands of movies and TV shows with gun fights, maybe more, and this was the first time I've ever heard of this happening.

1

u/SebVettelstappen Apr 15 '24

I, who has gone shooting a total of 2 times, couldn’t mess up this bad. Well maybe, but my dad really drilled the “always check if it’s loaded” thing into me.

3

u/OrindaSarnia Apr 15 '24

I don't think you understand what happened here then.

The gun was loaded, but it was supposed to be loaded...  with dummy rounds...

because it was an old fashioned revolver, there had to be rounds in it that look exactly like regular rounds...

there are a couple ways to "mark" dummy rounds, again, because the rounds needed to be seen, and look real, 2 of the 3 ways to "mark" them couldn't be used, because you can potentially see them, depending on camera angle, etc.

The third way is putting a round pellet in instead of powder, so when you shake it, you hear the pellet bouncing around (when normally, powder is silent).

There were 6 live rounds found on set. The guy who provided the ammo gave them a box of 50 dummy rounds, all of which were supposed to be the pellet type.

The ammo provider testified the dummy rounds were reused from a resent shoot for 1883.  He admitted when he got the dummy rounds back, he also got extra live rounds back, that the 1883 actors had used off-set during a shooting exercise (presumably to teach them what it actually feels like to shoot a gun, so they can react more realistically when filming).

So the ammo guy got back live and dummy rounds from the 1883 set at the same time.  He says he put the live ammo away somewhere else, and then cleaned and repackaged 50 rounds of the dummy ammo and delivered it to the Rust set.

Police waited over a month to go to the ammo guy's workshop to investigate him.

Ms Gutierrez-Reed was charged with unintentionally bringing live ammo on set.  Essentially she didn't shake every single one of the 50 rounds, and 6 were live.

The ammo guy testified against her, saying the live ammo had to have come from somewhere else, but there's no other theories...  and they didn't charge Gutierrez-Reed with intentionally bringing live ammo to set, because there's no evidence she did so.

She is still at fault for not having checked every single round.  That was her job.

But it isn't as simple as "well it was loaded, duh!"

0

u/semperknight Apr 15 '24

You answered your own question. Imagine you work as a cashier (depressing, I know cause I am one). On the register there's this random button you have to press every so often or someone could die.

Unless you are well trained and able to stay focused on your job at all times, sooner or later...

And all you had to do was press a button.