I hate to have to do this being that we should all be focusing on the loss of Halyna Hutchins; but, too many people are going straight for Alec Baldwin's throat on this while he's probably more crestfallen than any of us will ever be.
As a gun owner and somebody who has performed with guns and somebody who has served both as a director and as a cinematographer on multiple movies that involved guns, yes, I'm aware of the most fundamental rule that you never point the gun at anything that you don't intend to destroy. Even if you've checked to make sure that the gun is unloaded, you treat it as if it is.
Like I've said in previous posts, when I did Western gun shows when we were firing blanks, we would fire down and to the side. Even if by some sick miracle a live bullet ended up in the gun, it would end up in the dirt. If you were supposed to get killed in the scene, the gun goes off, you go down.
The difference is that that's supposed to be cheesy and every performance art benefits from a greater suspension of disbelief than cinema does.
If you're watching a movie and an actor fires a gun down and to the side and a squib goes off in the other actors chest, you're gonna break down laughing. It would look ridiculous.
Everybody asserting him or herself as an authority on fire arms and putting this tragedy on Baldwin has seen a movie in which your gun safety protocols were broken. Yes, I'm sure of it. You've seen guns pointed directly at people in cinema and television several thousand times and this is the first time that you've taken umbrage.
Even if Tom Cruise's gun that he used in the scene wherein he killed the two thieves in Collateral were "cold" which I assume it was, he was still pointing the fucking gun at them at point blank range and pulling the trigger.
Dating back to 1903 people were pointing guns directly at the camera and firing - watch The Great Train Robbery, it's available on YouTube.
Almost every Western has a gun discharged in the direction of the camera in the quick draw scenes and they're not shooting at the ground.
It's not my department; so, I'm not an expert on how the armorers and the prop departments have kept people safe; but, in reality, they've done a damn good job. This is the first gun related death on a film shoot of which I'm aware since 1993.
One thing that I do know is that Baldwin not only didn't load the gun - he wasn't allowed to load the gun. There are designated people on set to handle the preparation of the firearms up to the moment that they're handed to the talent. Protocols are in place to explain to the actors each time that they're handed a weapon to convey what the weapon is and what's in it.
There's a good reason why we don't put Brandon Lee's death on the shoulders of Michael Massee despite him having pulled the trigger. There were supposed to be people on set who knew how to get the shot that Alex Proyas wanted and make it safe and several people failed.
This is probably the same sort of tragedy. Keep that in perspective. Baldwin may have done something wrong that other actors in other movies didn't; but, there's no evidence to support that yet.