Hi, everyone. I hope you're all well. So, unless you have been
living under a rock for the last week, you will have heard
that Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed cinematographer
Helena Hutchins and injured director Joel Sauza while
rehearsing a scene on his new film, A Western Called Rust.
Now, you may be thinking, Daisy, why are you making a
video on this? It's been a huge story for a week now. Surely,
every single take on the issue has been done. Well, you would
be wrong because a far as I am aware nobody has yet propagated
the take that I am about to impart on you and that take is
that the real killer in this terrible situation is not Alex
Baldwin or the assistant director or the head armourer
who was responsible for the guns the real culprit here is
of all things covid-19. Okay so allow me to elaborate on my
hypothesis that the killer here is COVID or more specifically
COVID hysteria. For anyone who hasn't heard the details of the
situation this horrible thing happened because Alec Baldwin
was rehearsing a shootout seen in a Alec was meant to be
backing out of the church with the gun pointed at the camera
so they could get a nice close up of the gun. Now the reason
that Helena and Joel Souza were huddled around the camera at
the time was because they were trying to set up a shot before
the actual filming of the scene took place while of course Alec
was demonstrating how he was going to draw and use the gun
to help him get a shot. Thinking of course that the gun
was empty as had been indicated to him prior to the rehearsal
by assistant director Dave Halls Alec did not however
check the gun for himself which he should have done as the
shooter plenty of actors check their own guns regardless of
what they have been told by the armourer or the assistant
director for this exact reason you just never know and as an
executive producer Alec Baldwin had double the responsibility
to do so at the very least he should have checked for his own
peace of mind but then he pulled the trigger and we all
know what happened next it is a hideous nightmare situation
just a colossal failure on so many levels and I am heartily
heartily distressed for everybody involved now for the
sake of absolute clarity I want to define for you a few terms
that I will use in this video before I go any further I don't
know what your level of knowledge of guns is mine is
pretty basic even though I have fired a gun before nice
But either way there is some technical lingo to do with guns
that I'm going to explain really for my benefit as well
as anyone else's. So the first time live rounds or live ammo
means a cartridge consisting of a case primer propellent powder
and a single metallic projectile with a velocity of
more than 500 feet per second when fired. In other words a
bullet that can kill people. That was what was mistakenly in
the gun that Alex shot. The second term a blank. This is a
firearm car that generates a muzzle flash and an explosive
sound like any normal gun shot. The shooter experiences a
recoil and the blank may be capable of cycling the firearm
action but without shooting a projectile. So basically it
makes the gun go bang bang but without the speeding bullet.
However blanks can still be very very dangerous and guns
containing blanks must be treated with utmost caution.
Now the third term a dummy bullet or a dummy which is
solid and although it looks a complete cartridge has no
primer, no propellant, and no separate bullet. It cannot fire
and it makes no noise when it is shot. It is used for
training particularly for training in loading and
unloading firearms but in film and TV, dummies are often used
when filming an actor, loading a gun or filming a close up of
a gun as they look very much like real bullets and the final
term is cold gun which means a completely empty weapon without
even a blank cartridge inside. It can be handled without
danger of ignition and does not pose a threat. A gun is still
called a gold gun if it has dummy bullets inside since they
can't be projected and then hit someone. But the minute blanks
or live ammo are loaded. The gun becomes a hot gun so to
speak. Cold gun was what Dave Halls yelled when he handed
Alec Baldwin the gun. Hence the fact that Alec felt it was okay
to just pull the trigger. Now we've got that sorted. Let's
continue. Now there are a few things to bear in mind as we go
for namely who everyone is blaming for this as well as all
the accusations of negligence and safety issues being leveled
by sources from the set. For instance six crew members
walked off the job the night before the shooting because
among other reasons they said they were concerned about gun
safety on set. There had been two other accidental charges
prior to the fatal shooting in the form of Alec Baldwin's
stunt double being handed a weapon and told that it was
indeed co only to have it go off twice out of the blue while
he was holding it. Very very dangerous. Also if you've made
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We are just having so much fun. There have also been
accusations of a lack of safety meetings before performing
scenes where guns are used which is a real deviation from
safety protocols of guns on sets. Also an issue is the fact
the assistant director who handed Alec Baldwin the gun and
told him it was called Dave Halls had been fired from a
film in 2019 after a crew member had a minor and
temporary injury when a prop gun unexpectedly discharged.
That saying yeah he was brought in to replace first assistant
director Courtney Hope Theron in the film The Pale Door after
she was let go so to speak. She said the production had many
safety issues that she was unhappy with and pushed back on
as she stated to the LA Times. That's when they brought in
Dave because he had a reputation for being lax on
safety. Apparently, when the first AD walks off a project,
Dave is known as the guy you call. Also, on the action
thriller one way shot in Georgia in February, a camera
assistant said Halls didn't hold a safety meeting before
shooting a dangerous scene involving a Russian arm which
is a crane-like piece of equipment that is attached to a
high-speed vehicle. She reported her concern to two
producers and a local union rep and she also spoke to the LA
Times saying he has this demeanor that it's almost like
he doesn't take anything seriously said first camera
assistant Lisa Long who reported Halls behavior it got
so bad that I had a meeting with production to tell them he
didn't care about our safety and it wasn't right. Also being
blamed for the incident is the head armourer twenty-4 year old
Hannah Gutierrez Reed who is the daughter and apprentice of
legendary armourer Thell Reed. Hannah is being blamed because
one obviously is the head armorer she's in charge of the
guns and two she's very very green. She's only got two other
film credits and one of them she was costuming. The other
gig was a 2019 film with Nicholas Cage and that was her
first head armorer stint. Now many people are suggesting that
it was her apparent lack of experience that caused this
tragedy. They're insinuating that she was sloppy and
unprofessional given her age just didn't bother to check the
guns before they went off to the actors because she's young
and new. I don't agree with that at all. Just because she
is 24 years old doesn't mean that she doesn't know what
she's doing. As I mentioned she was apprentice to her father.
He trained her from a very very young age and she grew up
around guns. So well yes she is a rookie and she did make a
rookie era on the set of her first head armorer film when
she loaded a gun on the ground where there were before handing
it to a child actor you know that is very very different
though from not being able to tell the difference between
dummy bullets blanks and live ammunition or just not
bothering to check the guns before they were sent to be
used no I don't believe given her upbringing at her
apprenticeship that she she would have made those kinds of
errors. I mean that's just guns 101. There is a lot more at
play here. And it involves assistant director Dave Halls
some rogue crew members and as I mention covid-19. So the big
question here isn't why didn't anyone check the guns or why
did they hire a green armourer and an assistant director with
a rep for being a lapse on safety or anything like that.
The big question is how in the literal holy hell did live ammo
end up in a gun and a film set. You gotta remember real guns
are used in films. They are you know pretend weapons for the
purpose of theatrical use only. Which is why as a rule no live
ammo is allowed anywhere near a film set. There are too many
real guns floating around and live ammo can too easily be
mixed up with dummies and blanks. That's what the
director Joel Salsa said in his affidavit. No live ammo should
have been anywhere near the scene. He also said that he
could not exclude the possibility that maybe some of
the crew had brought live ammunition onto the set
themselves on that person because individual crew members
were not checked for live only the guns were checked which
brings me to the kicker. It was reported to The Wrap by a source
familiar with the set and yes I know that sounds dodgy but
nobody from the film's production company has denied
this yet so let's just go with it for now that a number of
crew members had been using the guns designated for a scene in
which Alec fatally shot Helena Hutchins to play Plinkys.
Plinkys is essentially target practice where you tried to
shoot beer cans using it live ammo not blanks not dummies
real live potentially deadly bullets so what I think
happened here is that these rogue crew members whether
through thoughtlessness or boredom swiped the guns in the
hours before the filming loaded them with live bullets that
they had brought with them onto the set and used the guns to
play plinking when the rest of the crew was looking the other
way upon finishing their little game perhaps rushed perhaps not
realizing where all of that time had gone they hurriedly
put the guns back and either forgot to unload what was left
of the live ammo in Alex gun or mistakenly thought they'd shot
out all the bullets when in fact one was left but look is
that implausible I mean after all it's a film set and while
yeah this one did have some safety issues I mean surely at
least the guns were supervised at all times like that's the
bare minimum isn't it that the armourer would have eyes on the
guns all of the time Under normal circumstances, yes. Not
only would the armorer always have eyes on the guns, they
would also be the only person handing the guns to the actors.
The fact the assistant director was acting as a middle man is a
major breach of safety protocols. The only person who
was supposed to handle the guns aside from the actors is the
armorer and before even handing the gun to the actor, they are
supposed to shine a torch into the gun barrel to show the
actor that it is safe what it is loaded with. Then the actor
has to signal to the armorer that they accept the gun is
empty and only after that is the armorer to hand it over.
The notion of an assistant director just really nearly
handing a gun to an actor without checking it without
showing the actor that it's empty and haphazardly yelling
cold gun is completely and utterly wrong. It is highly
irregular and a monumental safety hazard. So why did it
happen? And does this tie into crew members playing plinking
and leaving live ammo in Alec's gun? Well, It's all thanks to
COVID hysteria. Now I'm finally getting to the point of my
video. If you're wondering why Hannah Gutierrez Reed wasn't
always supervising the guns and why she didn't check them just
before they were used it wasn't because of laziness or because
she didn't know what she was doing. I'm sure that she
checked the guns thoroughly when she actually set them up.
It was because from what I can deduce she possibly wasn't
allowed to give them a final check just before the scene
because she wasn't allowed by the actors. Why? A manufactured
attempt to limit the spread of COVID. See COVID protocols on
set dictated that she simply set the guns up and then leave
them on a cart which she did in the early hours of the morning
on the day of the shooting. The production team was evidently
trying to minimise the contact everyone on set had with each
other to you know stop the spread. The cart was left
standing outside the makeshift church in which the scene was
being filmed with the assistant director designated to hand the
guns to the actors. A job he evidently did not take very
seriously do very well. That's why Hannah wasn't there
overseeing the handover and engaging in the usual torch lit
procedure and it's also why I think the guns were seemingly
left unattended for hours on this cart next to the set
leaving them absolutely ripe for rogue board idiotic crew
members to sneak off with load with live ammo and play
plinking that is how in my opinion the live ammunition got
into the gun nor because Hannah the head armorer was likely not
allowed to be at the filming site because literally
thousands of people could die if she accidentally saved gave
someone COVID. These COVID protocols are also why I think
they had the issue in the days proceeding with a gun
accidentally going off in the hands of Alex stunt double
after he was mistakenly told it was cold. Probably it was the
same set up as the day of the fatal shooting. You know you
know the gun set up on a cart somewhere for the assistant
director to hand to the actors instead of the armourer. I
would imagine that Hannah would have set them up probably just
fine and informed the powers that the of that but given the
state of the set when it comes to safety we can possibly
assume that someone either forgot or didn't listen or gave
the stunt double the wrong weapon. It all makes sense.
However the point is none of this negligent would actually
have been an issue had the guns not been left unattended
possibly for hours at the mercy of rogue crew members because
of the stupid formative COVID safety protocols. And while I'm
not saying the COVID protocols aren't important for any
YouTube overloads who may end up reviewing this video I am
not denying the existence or the severity of COVID. But
these protocols were imposed in this instance in a way that
enabled literal weapons of war to hang out on a cart
unattended for hours and hours. So in trying to save lives by
doing the performative COVID dance they inadvertently killed
someone. The irony would be profound if the whole situation
weren't so maddeningly tragic. And look to be clear I'm not
asserting that Hannah Gutierrez Reed is completely blameless.
Absolutely not far from it. The guns were hurt responsibility.
The minute she heard that the COVID safety protocols involved
her leaving the guns unattended. She should have
kicked up a huge stink and insisted that she'd be allowed
to attend to them as she is supposed to. She should have
insisted that proper protocols be followed. Now bear in mind
what I've relayed to you is just my interpretation of
events. It is my opinion based on what I have researched and
what I can infer. The truth will certainly out soon enough.
But what I can say with absolute certainty is that this
was a terrible hideous tragedy. Made all the more nightmarish
by the fact that it was entirely avoidable if only the
proper protocols had been followed and the silly
performative COVID safety dance had not been promoted over
what's actually important on films like this, gun safety. It
is all just too horrific for words. If you like that video
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