By John F. Di Leo -
On Thursday, October 21, AD 2021, actor Alec Baldwin, a well-known anti-gun extremist, allegedly killed a cinematographer and injured the director, by firing a loaded gun directly at them during the making of a western movie called “Rust” on a remote film set in New Mexico.
As more information comes out every day, it is too early to write a definitive account of the incident, or even to completely rule out intentional homicide. At this writing, it appears to be agreed that an assistant director took a gun from a table, announced “Cold Gun” and handed it to Baldwin, who accepted it without personally checking it, then aimed it at the camera for a “point of view” shot, practicing his cross-draw before filming it, hitting both the cinematographer and the director with a single round.
There will likely be legal precedents set by this case; there will certainly be an avalanche of books and op/eds about it. Alec Baldwin will be pilloried in the press, and rightly so, but I wonder if the most important lesson of the incident may be lost in the storm.
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