Written by: Holly Pulley, Staff Writer
TRAGIC: Live guns capable of holding actual bullets are too dangerous for TV sets.
On Thursday, October 22, 2021, Halyna Hutchins died from a bullet that was shot from a gun supposedly filled with blank rounds. On that same day, Joel Souza was wounded by the same gunshot.
On the set of the upcoming movie, Rust, Alec Baldwin’s character was ordered to fire a gun. When the armorer (the employee in charge of overseeing weapons used on set) handed Baldwin the gun, that assistant director yelled “cold gun”, signifying the gun had no live rounds. But when the gun went off, the cast was deceived. It is unclear whether Baldwin pulled the trigger or the gun went off on its own, but it resulted in cinematographer Halyna Hutchins getting shot in the stomach. Mr. Souza told the investigators he doesn’t remember how it went down, all he remembers is looking back to see Hutchins clutching her chest, saying she couldn’t feel her legs. The projectile went through Hutchins and hit Souza in the shoulder. Hutchins died on a helicopter to the hospital. Souza was taken to a hospital in New Mexico.
Supposedly the set’s conditions were iffy when it came to gun handling. The investigation brought up two other instances where stunt doubles were injured from “cold guns”on set. One of the workers on set was “so worried about weapon safety, he sent a text message to this manager warning of unsafe conditions.” according to ABC Net News. The armorer, Hannah Guterriez, has said to her lawyers and investigators that she had no idea the gun was loaded. Mike Tristano, a fellow gun handler for big movies like “ The Purge” and other big movies, said he thinks Gutierrez’s statement was “ridiculous”. “How could you not know what’s on your set in terms of anything that’s related to the weapons you’re supposed to be handling?” he told NBC news. He then continued to compare the situation to a chef catering an event and “being like: ‘I don’t know where this food came from.’”
This entire mess of a situation just proves that live guns on set are extremely unnecessary. In the past, forty-three people have died from guns on sets and one hundred-fifty people have been injured from guns on sets, according to npr.org. Bullets could possibly be edited into scenes with the technological advances we have now. “I do know that an ongoing effort to limit the use of firearms on film sets is something I’m extremely interested in,” Baldwin said.
The risk level may be low, considering how many bullets have been fired on sets throughout the years, but new measures need to be implemented so this doesn’t happen again. Not only did the mishandling of a gun from the weapon handler herself kill someone, her actions hurt the director of the movie. The shooting has been halted entirely, and it looks like Rust may not hit theaters after all. The investigation is still going on, and the main concern is if the bullets were a mistake or if the incident was premeditated. Hopefully people take this situation and find ways to prevent it from happening again, enforcing new armorer rules or hiring experienced weapon-masters, not 24 year-olds who can’t even keep track of actual weapons. Forty-four deaths caused by live weapons may not seem like a lot, but to the families of those victims, to Halyna Hutchins’ son and husband, it’s more than enough.