‘Rust’ shooting: Alec Baldwin wants police officers on sets to monitor weapons safety

Alec Baldwin is calling for a shift in responsibility on film sets by declaring that law enforcement should be present to monitor weapons safety.

The embattled “Rust” star and producer, who fired the Colt .45 that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza, is continuing to speak out about the tragic Oct. 21 incident and apparently believes that police would be more equipped than prop masters or armorers to protect the cast and crew.

“Every film/TV set that uses guns, fake or otherwise, should have a police officer on set, hired by the production, to specifically monitor weapons safety,” the actor tweeted from his now-private Twitter account. He also reposted the directive on Instagram.

Prop masters and armorers are usually the parties responsible for weapons safety.

In the fatal “Rust” case, plenty of blame has already been cast.

Although he said he’s “not allowed to make any comments because it’s an ongoing case,” Baldwin hasn’t stayed quiet since the incident and has doubled down on his defense of working conditions on that set.

On Friday, Baldwin pushed back against a claim made by former President Trump — whom he famously satirized on “Saturday Night Live” and feuded with for years — that suggested the actor intentionally shot Hutchins because he is “troubled” and “volatile.” This came just days after Baldwin re-upped a crew member’s missive rejecting the narrative that they were “overworked and surrounded by unsafe, chaotic conditions.”

The senior electrician on the Santa Fe, N.M., set publicly blamed rookie armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed and producers for “negligence” leading to Hutchins’ death — arguing that “there is no way a 24-year-old woman can be a professional with armory.”

But Gutierrez Reed’s legal team has claimed “sabotage,” suggesting that someone intentionally smuggled live rounds of ammunition into a box of dummy rounds before Hutchins was shot and killed.

However, former “Rust” cameraman Lane Luper — one of those who reportedly walked off the set after being fed up with allegedly unsafe and unreasonable working conditions — rejected that notion and told CNN that it was a “dangerous” and “irresponsible theory to put out on TV.”

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The day Alec Baldwin shot Halyna Hutchins and Joel Souza

Interviews with multiple members of the “Rust” crew paint an hour- by-hour picture of a cascade of bad decisions that created a chaotic set on which a lead bullet was put into a prop gun.

Oct. 31, 2021

According to The Times’ timeline of events, Gutierrez Reed entered the church set where they were rehearsing a shootout scene with firearms. She performed a safety check with the Colt .45 in front of first assistant director Dave Halls, who said he thought he saw three rounds inside the gun but admitted he did not check them before taking the weapon in his hand.

He told investigators that “he should have checked all of them, but didn’t, and couldn’t recall if she spun the drum,” according to a search warrant affidavit filed Oct. 27 by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.

In a statement to the New York Post, Halls said he hoped “this tragedy prompts the industry to reevaluate its values and practices to ensure no one is harmed through the creative process again.”