A Veteran Movie Armorer Challenges Alec Baldwin’s Claim That He Didn’t Pull Trigger in Fatal ‘Rust’ Shooting
Alec Baldwin says he didn’t pull the trigger on the gun that killed Halyna Hutchins, but a respected film armorer—and the Sheriff—disagree.
Alec Baldwin is being criticized in the wake of his first TV interview about the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was fatally shot on the New Mexico set of low-budget Western Rust after a live bullet was accidentally loaded into a prop gun Baldwin aimed at her.
In an emotional interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Thursday night, Baldwin recounted how the fatal tragedy unfolded, but was adamant that the incident wasn’t his fault.
“Someone is responsible for what happened,” he said. “And I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.”
According to Baldwin, he and Hutchins were working together on blocking a scene. “I’m holding the gun where she told me to hold it, which ended up being aimed right below her armpit,” Baldwin explained.
But Baldwin swears he never pulled the trigger. The actor claims that he “let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off.”
But Steve Wolf, a veteran Hollywood armorer with more than 30 years in the business, isn’t buying Baldwin’s explanation.
When The Wrap asked him to comment on the likelihood that the Rust accident happened the way that Baldwin explained it, Wolf’s replied: “One a scale of one to 10? Zero.”
“You know, guns don’t go up by themselves, right?,” Wolf continued. “It’s an inanimate object. It has no batteries. It has no timer. It has no web connection. It’s not a smart piece of equipment.
“It’s a very reliable device that shoots when you press the trigger, and it doesn’t shoot when you don’t press the trigger.”
While Baldwin stated that he “would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger,” Wolf says that the gun in question, an F.LL1 Pietta Long Colt 45 Revolver, has a very sensitive trigger and can be easily discharged.
“I believe that he believes what he’s saying, because I don’t believe that he intended to press the trigger,” Wolf told The Wrap.
“But I also don’t believe that the trigger pressed itself. A single-action Colt 45 like that has a very, very light trigger. You know, if you have your finger on the trigger, you can almost think to yourself, ‘shoot’—and then the gun goes off.
“But it’s not because you were thinking ‘shoot,’ it’s because you had some muscle tension. And when that increases, it’s sufficient to fire the gun.”
Baldwin’s fellow actor George Clooney has previously questioned how the tragedy could happen on a competently-run movie set.
And more importantly, the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department–which is investigating the incident along with the FBI–agrees with the armorer.
“Guns don’t just go off,” Sheriff Adan Mendoza told Fox News. “So whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm, he did that and it was in his hands.”
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