California state Sen. Dave Cortese (D) is introducing legislation to ban live guns and ammunition on movie sets in the wake of actor Alec Baldwin’s fatal discharge of a prop gun Thursday.
Breitbart News reported that 42-year-old cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died and 48-year-old director Joel Souza was wounded after Baldwin discharged a prop gun on the set of ‘Rust.’
On October 22, 2021, Reuters noted that the prop gun Baldwin fired was loaded with “live rounds.” Hutchins was shot in the chest when the prop gun was discharged. She was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Alec Baldwin speaks on the phone in the parking lot outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office in Santa Fe, N.M., Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. (Jim Weber/Santa Fe New Mexican via AP)
Fox News observed that Sen. Cortese responded to the deadly incident by pushing a new gun control bill “to ban live ammunition and guns that can fire such ammunition from theatrical productions across the state.”
Cortese said, “There is an urgent need to address alarming work abuses and safety violations occurring on the set of theatrical productions, including unnecessary high-risk conditions such as the use of live firearms.”
Actor Brandon Lee was killed on a movie set by a gun firing blanks in 1993.
The Sun pointed noted:
Brandon’s character Eric Draven was involved in a scene where another actor, Michael Massee, who played “Funboy”, had to fire blanks at him from a .44 Magnum.
Around midnight on the morning of March 31, the cast and crew were filming a scene at Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina.
As Lee entered a room, Massee shot him from a distance of 15 feet.
A dummy bullet from a previous scene was lodged in the barrel of the prop gun without anyone realizing.
When the blank round was fired at Brandon, it shot the dummy bullet at him with virtually the same force as a live round.
He was hit in the abdomen and, despite six hours of emergency surgery, he died on the operating table.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that NBC’s ‘The Rookie’ banned live guns on set following the prop gun discharge by Alec Baldwin.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.