t’s been a little over a month since 42-year-old Halyna Hutchins tragically died after a prop gun misfired on the sets of the movie Rust. It was actor Alec Baldwin who was reportedly wielding the gun when the director of photography was fatally shot on October 21.
However, the 63-year-old claimed that he did not pull the trigger of the antique gun that subsequently led to the death of Hutchins and left the film’s director Joel Souza, 48, injured. Contrary to his assertions, gun experts now say that a revolver firing is quite unlikely without the trigger being pulled.
The It’s Complicated star addressed the questions surrounding the controversial shooting in a televised tell-all, a preview of which shows the actor admitting that he indeed was holding a gun that was loaded with live bullets.
That being said he also noted that the loaded gun should never have been on the set at all. In the due course of the ABC interview which aired on Thursday night, December 2, an emotional Baldwin unequivocally states that he didn’t pull the trigger. “The trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger,” he told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos.
“No, no, no, no, I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger. Never,” continued Baldwin. The actor, who is a regular on SNL, also expressed that he does not feel any guilt over the shooting, claiming that someone else is responsible for the cinematographer’s death. “Do you feel guilt?” asked Stephanopoulos, to which the actor responded saying, “No. No. I feel that there is, I feel that someone is responsible for what happened and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me. I might have killed myself if I thought I was responsible, and I don’t say that lightly.”
He went on to describe Hutchins as someone “who was loved by everyone who worked with and liked by everyone who worked with and admired.” Baldwin continued, “And even now, I find it hard to believe that, it just doesn’t seem, it doesn’t seem real to me.” At one point during the exclusive interview, Stephanopoulos pressed the actor to divulge the fact that “it wasn’t in the script for the trigger to be pulled.” This is when Balwin claimed, “Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger,” according to the Daily Wire.
“I cock the gun. I go, ‘Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?’ And then I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off,” Baldwin said. “Guns don’t just go off,” noted Sheriff Adan Mendoza in response to the actor’s claim, according to Fox News. “So whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm, he did that and it was in his hands.” Meanwhile, Weapons armorer Bryan W. Carpenter told Fox News that it’s “rare” for a revolver like the one Baldwin was holding to be fired without pulling the trigger.
“In order to make it fire, you have to put your thumb up onto the hammer, cock the hammer all the way back, and then as the hammer is completely cocked back, then you pull the trigger, and then the gun fires,” explained Carpenter. “So that’s very important because that gun had to have two-step process to fire. It had to be cocked and the trigger pulled to fire.” He added, “Once you cock the hammer back on one of those old west guns, it doesn’t take a lot to set that trigger off. You know, they’re very light triggers.” Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department is waiting for the FBI’s results to reveal how the gun could have been fired, whether it was pulling the trigger or pulling back the hammer, or both.
