Gun Laws and the “Rust” Incident

I’ll be clear from the outset that this entry has not been well researched. I’ve read a few articles and just had a train of thought that I want to jot down. This is also less about the actual incident and more about the reaction to it from gun owners and gun advocates. Given Alec Baldwin’s politics, it’s not surprising that they’ve been less than kind.

First, let me say that I believe the incident from Rust was a tragic accident. There are certainly responsible parties, including Baldwin, but I don’t see any action of the immediate parties as criminal. Just stupid, and tragic. If you aren’t entirely familiar with the incident, I’ll give a quick synopsis of what happened: On the set of a country western style production, there were multiple guns being utilized, some real and some fake. The cast & crew were also using the guns for fun offset, shooting targets and cans and things. During rehearsal, an assistant director, grabbed a gun from a cart, declared it a “cold gun” and handed to Alec Baldwin. Baldwin then rehearsed his scene which included aiming and shooting at the camera. Baldwin did not double-check the gun (should he have?) and fired a single live round that struck the camerawoman, passing through and killing her, and then hitting the director. I would assume the director was watching the camera over her shoulder.

Baldwin is reported to have gone into a bit of shock, asking “was I handed a hot gun?”

More will likely come out about the working condition of the set and someone will be held responsible, through a lawsuit if nothing else.

Online, especially on some of the forums I frequent that are made up of hunters and gun owners (mostly conservative), no one has any sympathy for the shooter. Most point to the “rules of gun safety” they’ve learned from their parents and family members, or from the military, etc. My response though, is that these rules of gun safety are not common to everyone. How can we hold everyone to the rules of gun safety, if many people have never been taught them or required to learn them. These rules are certainly not laws, so we can’t point to them as a law being broken. I am also not an attorney (I invite any who are to comment), but would ask, can we really hold someone responsible for not upholding the rules of gun safety if we can reasonably assume that they’ve never been presented them? Several people I’ve seen have commented about the “first thing you learn in hunter’s safety course…” to which I’ve responded, “do you think Alec Baldwin took a hunter’s safety course?”

Years ago, Plaxico Burress, a well-known and successful football player, had an incident in which he shot himself, accidentally, while in a club. He was the legal owner of the gun and was licensed to carry it, although the license did not apply in the jurisdiction he was in. He also didn’t need the gun, considering he had private security, but most self-carry advocates would say, it can’t hurt to have extra protection. Although, this time it did. Burress carried the gun, loaded, and tucked into his waistband. That’s a face-palm action for any responsible handgun user. That gun was not secure, could be easily dropped, stolen, or accidentally discharged, which in this case was what happened. Luckily only Burress was injured, and not seriously. But he spent 20 months in jail because in NYC, the gun was not legal…

It’s very easy for me, who grew up around guns, to look at Plaxico Burress or Alec Baldwin and criticize their lack of understanding of firearms safety, laws, and care. The term “responsible gun owners” gets thrown around a lot, as the victimized crowd who are unfairly punished because of the actions of a few rogue individuals. We often hear “it’s the person behind the gun, not the gun itself…” Which, to some extent, I agree with. That is why I don’t understand why we aren’t a little more concerned with the qualifications of gun owners/purchasers. Yes, background checks already exist, but there are loopholes that I’m not interested in discussing at this moment. What I’m more interested in (right now) is training and safety.

At minimum, anyone licensed to carry should be required to take or have taken a gun safety training course. We require it to hunt in PA and most other states (if not all). Why do we not require it to carry and handgun in public? Furthermore, if you purchase a gun for protection and are unaware of gun safety and unskilled in using one, you are a bigger danger to yourself and family than whatever you’re trying to protect from. We require licensing for things like use of pesticides, cars, massage therapy, etc. Why can we not require some proof of “responsible gun owner” in order to purchase a firearm?

Slippery slope arguments don’t cut it for me. Right is right and wrong is wrong, so I don’t buy “well that sounds good, but what next?” What’s next is we evolve. We stop thinking so rigidly and continue to work on the problems. I like guns. I don’t think everyone should have one. And I don’t think anyone should have certain guns, or guns with certain abilities. We can argue about what that means, but the failure of one side to acknowledge the problem is absurd. The failure of the other side seems to be misunderstanding the problem and vilifying objects rather than finding solutions.