Rust DA believes it's possible Baldwin fired accidentally

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

Actor Alec Baldwin has been under fire for a little while now, ever since the fatal shooting of a young cinematographer on the set of the movie Rust.

Baldwin has maintained that he never pulled the trigger on the gun when it “just went off” as so many people claim their’s did.

Advertisement

However, the New Mexico DA looking into the case thinks the actor may be right.

Meanwhile, Santa Fe’s district attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies — who has worked as a public defender and later in a private capacity — spoke with Vanity Fair and told the publication that in her estimation following an “unofficial test” from her team, it is possible for a live round to be discharged from a firearm without the trigger being pulled.

Carmack-Altwies has yet to file criminal charges, and a full forensic report is expected in late-February, which many anticipate will speak to the make and type of ammunition that was used in the prop weapon, which was supposed to be housing blank dummy rounds.

“One of the investigators in my office happens to have a very old type revolver, and so he brought it, at my request, so that we could look at it and see if that was at all possible,” she told the outlet, adding that the room was cleared and two independent inspectors looked over the weapon — one who supplied the piece and another who verified it was empty.

“Then they visually showed me you can pull the hammer back without actually pulling the trigger and without actually locking it,” Carmack-Altwies explained. “So you pull it back partway, it doesn’t lock, and then if you let it go, the firing pin can hit the primer of the bullet.”

Meanwhile, in December, Sheriff Adan Mendoza told Fox News Digital,”Guns don’t just go off. So whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm, he did that, and it was in his hands.”

Advertisement

So which is it?

Well, both Mendoza and Carmack-Altwies are correct as far as it goes.

This “unofficial” test doesn’t actually tell us anything that we didn’t already know. Yes, some older models of guns had no safety features to prevent that kind of thing from happening. We’ve long known this.

However, you can’t pick up a random “older” gun and conduct a test with it and it tell you anything about the gun Baldwin had in his hand at that exact moment. After all, it’s unlikely it was an antique firearm being used on that set. It’s far more likely it was a newer model that looked like the older guns but has the relevant safety features.

And why is Carmack-Altwies and her office conducting tests on different guns than the one used to killed Halyna Hutchinson? Don’t they have some degree of access to the actual weapon in question? If so, why not test that one to see if it could happen, rather than some random gun someone in the office has?

If not, why not?

As for Sheriff Mendoza arguing that guns don’t just go off, he’s not wrong. Even if it’s just a case of the hammer slipping out of someone’s finger, it’s still a case of someone manipulating the gun. It didn’t just go off.

It would also seem to me that if this is a case of Baldwin just playing with the gun and the hammer slipping out of his fingers, that’s still manslaughter. He’s been in too many movies where he handled guns to have never been told that you don’t just fidget with a gun. If he did and it went off and someone died as a result of that negligence, that’s not much different than a cop grabbing her handgun rather than her taser, at least in my opinion.

Advertisement

Of course, I’m not a prosecutor, and Carmack-Altwies and her test have me concerned that Hutchinson won’t get the justice she deserves because the supposed prosecutor isn’t really doing her job and using half-assed experiments with completely different guns to justify not prosecuting a big movie star.

I hope I’m wrong on that, but this latest news doesn’t fill me with confidence.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member