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It does appear likely that it is Baldwin's role as the producer that is the basis for the charge. The armorer has also been charged, and the state OSHA fined the production company for violating various firearms safety regulations. The OSHA chief was quoted as saying, "What we had, based on our investigators' findings, was a set of obvious hazards to employees regarding the use of firearms and management's failure to act upon those obvious hazards."
I think the opposite, in that otherwise other producers would have been similarly charged. Especially as Baldwins role as producer did not apparently involve hiring any of the people or overseeing them on set. Given that it would be weird to charge him specifically out of all the producers. Ryan Smith's production company was apparently the one that did that.
I think he was charged because he was the one with the gun in his hand.
Yes, it looks like you are right. The NY Times this am says:
and
And I suppose they might also argue that his knowledge of previous issues on set re guns served to enhance his duty.
Of course, that the DA claims such a duty exists does not mean that the duty does, in fact, exist. The first claim (“You should not point a gun at someone that you’re not willing to shoot,”) is clearly wrong in the special case of a movie production. Movie productions substitute other safety rules for that one, like "No live ammunition should be available" (a rule obviously impractical in other circumstances involving firearms).
That "absolute duty" (the "absolute" would indicate failure was itself proof of negligence -- though still not necessarily criminal negligence) seems unlikely to be supported by NM case law.
They also substituted the safety rule of “say ‘cold gun’ to the talent when you hand over an unloaded weapon” for the well-known safety rule “every gun is always loaded, unless you yourself have checked.” Together, those two substituted rules allowed one bullet onto the set, into the gun, and ultimately through the victim.
The moment anyone on set heard about the accidental discharge two days before, the standard rules should have been reinstated.
No; the substituted rules were violated. One rule was "no live ammo on set" and another was "check the ammo before loading it into the gun". Both these were violated, but not by Baldwin. The source of the live ammo remains unclear, but it was the armorer's job to ensure it was not present and to check the ammo before loading it into the gun.
The standard rules for a movie production are the substituted ones. The earlier accidental discharges were of blanks. One was caused when someone slipped while lowering the hammer -- in that particular revolver one must lower the hammer by pulling the trigger and holding the hammer back. Another was apparently caused by dropping a rifle loaded with a blank. Both of these can happen without any rule violations at all, merely unavoidable human fallibility.
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Of course not. But we are discussing the DA's rationale for bringing the charges,not whether Baldwin is guilty.
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