If you aren't familiar with Mr. Harrell, this is a video he made - apparently reluctantly - that hopefully will gain the confidence of anyone who regards themselves as a gun nut:

 

If you aren't familiar with Mr. Harrell, this is a video he made - apparently reluctantly - that hopefully will gain the confidence of anyone who regards themselves as a gun nut:

I‘ve been watching Paul’s videos for years. I hadn’t watched for a while, but before that gap I had seen the video here he first revealed he was having “medical problems”. (It had something to do with preempting a person who threatened to reveal it)

It was confusing without context, but I just let it slide. Fast forward to some time at the end of 2023, or the beginning of 2024 and I happened to watch another video. In this one, the normally exceptionally robust Paul was using a single crutch and not looking very good. He also did the introduction, then said, “this is about as much time as I can spend on camera, so I am handing the rest of the video off to my brother”. Something I have never seen him do, for any reason.

He said, at the end of that video, this could be the last time he appeared. This was very grim and I suddenly connected the revelation about health problems with the situation in the video. After that, more videos concerning it, from other people, showed up in my feed.

I like Paul. His style is very, very familiar to me. I have known people like him and there is something endearing about his presentation. This might sound patronizing but it’s not as far as I am concerned. He also learned about firearms and marksmanship during the same era as I did, and so much of his content is very familiar.

I don’t always agree with Paul, and I rarely agree in all details even when I do overall, but I enjoy watching him—he is a Heideggarian “work of art”. I respect his authenticity, integrity, and moral rectitude. He will be missed by me.

 

If you aren't familiar with Mr. Harrell, this is a video he made - apparently reluctantly - that hopefully will gain the confidence of anyone who regards themselves as a gun nut:

A small thing: did you notice the modified Weaver stance he is using at the start of that? That’s one of the things that attaches me to Paul’s zeitgeist, an older one that isn’t much respected any more. It is what I learned, and is part of muscle memory. It is how I shoot even today, and though I tried to switch up to the “modern” isosceles method, it wasn’t going to work for me.

(For one thing I don’t use a race gun. or have compensators on my handguns, and another—I have many thousands of rounds with presentation, double tap, and tap-rack-bang drills baked into handling a pistol. This is now baked in to handling, and there is really no reason to change what is working. Would I win competitions involving race guns—absolutely not—but my needs are purely practical, and they are met.)

 

Paul has contributed an endless wealth of knowledge to all of us who enjoy the shooting sports. Last year came the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and I think Paul is about 65 years old. When my own dad was 77 I watched that same cancer turn him into a stick before he died.

Moving along to the trial my view is with an 18 month sentence she pretty much got off. Her neglect resulted in a death and while there is plenty of blame to go around an eighteen month sentence is nothing.

Ron

 

Paul has contributed an endless wealth of knowledge to all of us who enjoy the shooting sports. Last year came the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and I think Paul is about 65 years old. When my own dad was 77 I watched that same cancer turn him into a stick before he died.

Moving along to the trial my view is with an 18 month sentence she pretty much got off. Her neglect resulted in a death and while there is plenty of blame to go around an eighteen month sentence is nothing.

Ron

Frankly I find it nothing sort of insane, to allow the use of working firearms in movies. There are superb replicas available these days and legislation mandating them on movie lots would almost eliminate the risk of death. Everything about gun safety flies in the face of using them, pointing them at people and discharging them unless one is under a deadly threat.

 

Frankly I find it nothing sort of insane, to allow the use of working firearms in movies. There are superb replicas available these days and legislation mandating them on movie lots would almost eliminate the risk of death. Everything about gun safety flies in the face of using them, pointing them at people and discharging them unless one is under a deadly threat.

Most of what was done here was obviously already illegal. Mandating another law won't make it more illegal. Those (this is a rare occurrence, that's why it's news, as opposed to the many cases of safe usage of working firearms in movies) responsible being accused, having their day in court and very publicly punished will IMO do more to eliminate the risk of death than another layer of illegal.

 

She appears extremely young, and I am wondering just what training and experience she had?
Is there qualifications reqd. for that trade or profession??

 

She appears extremely young, and I am wondering just what training and experience she had?
Is there qualifications reqd. for that trade or profession??

Her stepfather was well known in the business and she was cheap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thell_Reed

 

Frankly I find it nothing sort of insane, to allow the use of working firearms in movies. There are superb replicas available these days and legislation mandating them on movie lots would almost eliminate the risk of death. Everything about gun safety flies in the face of using them, pointing them at people and discharging them unless one is under a deadly threat.

Yes and I agree and we have been over all of that. So how does that address my post which you quoted? I am just not seeing a connection?

Ron

 

She appears extremely young, and I am wondering just what training and experience she had?
Is there qualifications reqd. for that trade or profession??

Not that I'm aware of -- which, frankly, is the case with most jobs in most industries. My understanding is that she was hired based on her father's reputation as an armorer and firearms expert, but that she had relatively little experience as the actual armorer. She was also filling at least two roles on set, that of armorer and also a prop assistant. So her attention was divided. She also apparently had a known drug problem. The pictures that they keep showing of her present her as a show-off, but I have to remind myself that those might be the exception and are simply the photos that the media chooses to use over and over to sensationalize things.

While I believe she is more culpable than anyone else, since she WAS the armorer and therefore the buck stops with her for all gun-safety issues on set, there is plenty of blame to go around. If whomever had chosen her decided to hire a more experienced armorer, or checked her out more carefully and gone with someone else because of the drug history, or perhaps only had her working the single position of armorer, things would have been different. If the person she gave the gun to had done proper checks, instead of (as far as I know) accepting her word and the check she did before she gave him the gun. If Baldwin had checked the gun when it was handed to him. If the practice on set had been that when we film a weapon being fired, even if it is a complete dry-fire, we ensure that no one is in the line of fire. Point your gun at the camera and pull the trigger all day long to get the shot you want, just insist that no one actually be standing behind the camera at the time. If you do have a scene that simply requires someone actually be pointing the gun (whether it is going to be fired or not) at someone and you can't figure out an acceptable way to get the shot with the gun pointing at least slightly off to the side, then that gets categorized as a high-risk shot and you have special procedures and checks and double checks in place. Yes, that makes those shots more expensive to make, but that in and of itself provides incentive for the screenwriters and directors and armorers to find other ways to get an acceptable result.

I haven't been following the story very closely, so maybe this has been determined, but I've never seen a reasonable explanation for when or how the live round made it into the gun. The how might never be determined, but you would think that they could at least narrow down a window of time to when it happened and, from there, identify who was (or who should have been) responsible for the firearm during that time.

As for whether 18 months was appropriate -- my understanding is that it was the maximum sentence for what she was charged with. Also, eighteen months in prison is not a cakewalk, not to mention having it on her record for the rest of her life. I also keep coming back to the notion that this tragedy was the result of a chain of failures, most of them pretty minor, made by numerous people. So holding just one person completely accountable seems a bit harsh. So I think her having to take eighteen months as the price for being the armorer who failed to provide effective oversight is not unreasonably light.

But, more than anything, the industry needs to review and revise its accepted best practices and look at ways to enforce them -- and they have a number of tools to do that at their disposal.

 

I agree with all!

 

 

Yes and I agree and we have been over all of that. So how does that address my post which you quoted? I am just not seeing a connection?

Ron

I was expanding upon the theme, in this case the woman who got 18 months for being cavalier with guns on the movie set.

 

I was expanding upon the theme, in this case the woman who got 18 months for being cavalier with guns on the movie set.

Otay and thanks for the clarification.

Ron