Actor Alec Baldwin wants police officers on set to supervise weapons – Franceinfo

Police officers should be present on all shoots that use firearms, actor Alec Baldwin said on Monday (November 8), who accidentally killed a filmmaker last month while repeating a movie scene with a gun that had been presented to her as harmless. “Every film or television shoot that uses firearms, whether dummy or not, should have a policeman on set paid by the production to ensure the safety of the weapons”, wrote Alec Baldwin on Twitter.

On October 21, the director of photography for the western Rust, Halyna Hutchins, had been fatally wounded by a gunshot fired by the American actor, who was rehearsing a scene where he had to draw his revolver. The weapon had been presented to him as “cold”, which means it’s meant to be inert and harmless in movie parlance. But it contained real ammunition.

Gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, in charge of the firearms on set, said she was unaware of the presence of live ammunition, in theory banned from filming by very strict industry rules.

The police investigation is still ongoing and, if no arrests have been made, criminal prosecution is not ruled out if responsibility is established.

Alec Baldwin, who is also a producer of Rust, had deplored this “accident” who had according to him “one chance in a trillion” to occur. The American actor says he cannot comment on the facts themselves while the investigation is ongoing.

Since the drama, voices have multiplied to demand better control of firearms on set, or even their outright abandonment in favor of dummy weapons and special effects added later. A petition to this effect had collected 110,000 signatures on Monday and star actor Dwayne Johnson, one of the highest paid in the world, pledged last week to no longer use live firearms in his films.