Alec Baldwin spent a lot of time bashing the NRA. In his mind, the organization bordered on being demonic…and I’m not even sure he believed it only bordered being so.

Never one to temper his outrage, Baldwin said a lot of negative things about the group. Gun rights advocates have since returned it in kind, of course.

However, at the end of the day, the NRA could have prevented the shooting that threatens to send Baldwin to prison.

As far as we know, the film’s 24-year-old head armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, had no special training or licenses to ensure she was qualified (beyond whatever she may have been taught by her father, a well-known Hollywood armorer). By contrast, if animals are used in a movie, the set is closely supervised by an American Humane Society Certified Animal Safety Representative who oversees the treatment of the animals. Movie companies get their scripts approved by the AHS in advance and they sign off on the credentials of any animal handlers assigned to the film, which often include veterinarians. In exchange for following these practices, producers are permitted by AHS to say in the credits, “No animals were harmed in the production of this film.”

So while Hollywood is very serious about the safe handling of animals on the set and the safety of the crew around those animals, this is not the case with guns. There are guidelines covering basic rules of safety issued by studios on how to treat firearms. Under the “Safety on the Set” category for Warner Brothers Studios website, they even type them all in capital letters so you know they really mean business.

• TREAT ALL FIREARMS AS THOUGH THEY ARE LOADED.
• DO NOT ENGAGE IN HORSEPLAY WITH ANY FIREARMS OR WEAPONS.
• NEVER POINT A FIREARM AT ANYONE, INCLUDING YOURSELF, AND IF CALLED UPON TO DO SO, CONSULT THE PROPERTY MASTER.
• WHENEVER POSSIBLE, SIMULATED OR DUMMY WEAPONS SHOULD BE UTILIZED.
• LIVE AMMUNITION IS NOT TO BE BROUGHT ONTO A STUDIO LOT, STAGE OR LOCATION.
• https://www.safetyontheset.com/

There is such a thing as a “Licensed Armorer” for movie companies but that license comes from their union, not any state agency or organization specifically engaged in firearms safety training.

…

Hollywood stars and producers need gun control as badly as they claim the rest of us do. In fact, though they politically can’t or won’t admit it, they need the NRA.

SOFREP editor-in-chief Sean Spoonts points out, correctly, that the NRA provides training and certification for pretty much every range safety officer in the nation plus a lot of law enforcement firearms trainers have NRA training.

The NRA is actually an organization that’s ideally suited to help Hollywood make their sets safer places for everyone.

Oh, but now they’re looking to ban the use of actual firearms on the set. That’ll negate a lot of that, right?

We’ll have to see. While they can do a lot with computers these days, I’m not so sure it’ll make gunplay look realistic in any way. Granted, Hollywood gunfights have never been particularly realistic, but you know what I mean. People expect the gun to act in a certain way. Without that, we may be looking at problems for Hollywood.

If California law bans real guns on the set, productions will roll over to states that don’t have any such laws. They film a lot of stuff here in Georgia right now and there’s no political will to ban the use of real firearms on a movie set, as an example.

So I suspect they’re going to keep doing it, yet they won’t look to the NRA and ask for help.

Hell, their hatred for the organization is so ingrained within them that they won’t ask them for help. If they turn to anyone, it’ll be a “gun safety” group that actually knows nothing about how to properly handle a firearm that they didn’t steal from the NRA in the first place.

Sooner or later, this will happen again. It’ll happen again because Hollywood absolutely hates the one organization uniquely suited to help prevent it from happening.

I get them not agreeing with the political side of the NRA, but a lot of people–and this includes Hollywood–forget about the training side of the organization. Forgetting that will be to the movie industry’s detriment.