I was just about to comment about this. There’s an account set up about a week ago by anonymous IATSE members to talk about the strike. One of their recent posts is a screenshot allegedly from one of the union crew members who walked off the Rust set that morning specifically in protest of the lack of pay, absent COVID safety, and lax gun safety. The producers’ response was allegedly to call the police on those crew and bring in the non-union workers.
It’s shaping up to be a very clear case of wilful negligence occasioning death.
Wow, that’s a pretty damning post.
Guns are often filmed pointed towards cameras.
Crazy talk! Seditious crazy talk!.
I hate when they don’t even say her name. From the Yahoo News post:
Hours before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of “Rust” with a prop gun
There are entire news reports that never say her name even once.
Halyna Hutchins. She was a fascinating person.
Precisely.
Halyna Hutchins is the person who needlessly lost her life, so the focus should be on her.
So instead of:
Alec Baldwin fatally shoots director of photography on film set in apparent prop gun accident
Perhaps:
Halyna Hutchins director of photography on film set of movie “RUST”, killed in apparent prop gun accident
See how easy that was! Take note news rooms!
Saying Alec Baldwin gets more clicks, though, so… 
Near as I can tell, the American Cinematographer magazine has two pieces on Halyna Hutchins.
https://ascmag.com/articles/halyna-hutchins
and
https://ascmag.com/articles/rising-stars-of-cinematography-2019
and have edited their search engine to make it seem like there are more.
It was up to 5 different articles on the incident on the BBC most popular page. As a self feeding click monster this story with the Alec Baldwin face on it seems to be thriving.
my daughter isn’t driving yet, but when I’m driving with her and I screw up and there’s no harm done, I try to point out to her that’s it’s morally the same as if I’d hit someone - we just got lucky this time.
Alec Baldwin mentioned in the body, but doesn’t steal the headline
The more that comes to light about this, the more it seems like it should result in potential liability for criminal negligence by Rust Productions LLC and arguably whoever was in charge of cutting the workplace safety corners that resulted in this.
(Apologies for Daily Heil link, but it’s the most detailed account I’ve been able to find.)
For those who understandably don’t want to give the Daily Heil any traffic, here’s less detailed stories from Variety and NBC…
No word on whether Baldwin joined in on this plinking,
Thinks are looking worse for the 24 year-old armorer, who apparently had both live ammo with bullets as well as blanks on site when there shouldn’t have been any real bullets anywhere near the set.
I reject the arbitrary claims that a 24 year-old person’s age inherently disqualifies them to be a qualified armorer - the military proves that wrong, where young people are routinely trained and subsequently trusted with powerful weapons and dangerous missions. And I think that someone could apprentice at a young age and certainly be at journeyman/person level by that age. The incident that happened isn’t fully known publicly, but so far it appears it wasn’t a failure a the level of at the level of some arcane level of knowledge that only a middle aged industry veteran could know, but rather multiple failures of basic safety protocols.
Increasingly, it doesn’t look like either the armorer or the 1st Assistant Director (who is generally in charge of on set safety) behaved responsibly based on their reported actions.
Agreed. It looks like she made some pretty awful errors here.
I don’t know how the film industry works, but in other industries overseeing safety culture is supposed to be the responsibility of those mature professionals. So I believe there are people above her who also made terrible mistakes.
At 24, I don’t believe she’ll have the network required to keep from getting thrown under the bus. And I believe that people above her will escape this with their freedom and wealth intact. Just a guess, of course, and I hope I’m wrong.
ETA: this assumes that the armourer was aware of the plinking, and that the crew hadn’t snuck out with the guns, etc.
If the armorer didn’t have the guns under her exclusive lock and key then she was still negligent. She’s responsible for the chain of custody and the inspections before use on set that help insure safe gun handling during the production. If she wasn’t given that authority that is required of her position that’s a problem, too, and unfortunately I have to agree that pawns’ heads will roll, and executives who cut corners will likely get off without any criminal convictions or personal civil judgements 
