Letters to the Editor: Our insatiable appetite for violence in movies killed Halyna Hutchins

To the editor: I feel nothing but deep sorrow for all the victims of this terrible tragedy on the New Mexico set of the movie “Rust,” where cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed Friday.

Perhaps it will prompt a discussion about the grotesque degree of violence on television and in our films.

My late father, Charles S. Dubin, directed episodic TV, including “M*A*S*H” for many years. He used to say over and over, around the dinner table, that the true obscenity in entertainment wasn’t naked bodies or the like but the violence.

May we follow my father’s lead and put an end to it. It is obscene.

Zan Dubin-Scott, Santa Monica

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To the editor: This incident is a perfect example of what firearms instructors call a “negligent discharge.”

The first thing you do when you pick up a gun is see for yourself whether it’s loaded. Never point a gun at something or someone you don’t intend to shoot, whether or not you think it’s loaded.

What in the world were they doing with live ammunition on a movie set? If people would just obey commonly known handgun safety rules, so-called “accidental shootings” would drop drastically.

Our oft-vilified friends at the National Rifle Assn. offer numerous safety programs to help.

John Hazlet, Pasadena

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To the editor: Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer on the set of “Rust,” said in an interview last month that she wants to show “people who are normally kind of freaked out by guns how safe they can be.”

Maybe people are freaked out because guns have only one purpose: to kill.

Ronna Siegel, Van Nuys

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To the editor: I wish that the media would stop calling the firearm that killed Hutchins a “prop gun.” It was a real gun that could fire real bullets, and the failure to treat the firearm as a real danger was exactly what killed Hutchins.

Calling it a prop gun can help create the impression that what happened in New Mexico was an unforeseeable, and thus unavoidable, accident beyond anyone’s control.

Larry Markes, Hollywood