Alec Baldwin charged with involuntary manslaughter in fatal ‘Rust’ shooting: district attorney. Live ammunition on the set that shouldn’t have been there, ammunition not checked for live rounds (Why wasn’t the gun empty for practice scenes?), the mysterious single-action .45 that required no trigger pull, failed to hold in the full cock position and the safety notch failed, allowing it to fire.

Note: We have an old single-action (non-transfer bar) pistol. I just checked it. With the hammer back it holds unless the trigger is pulled. If you hold the hammer with your thumb, pull the trigger, quickly release the trigger and continue letting the hammer down the hammer is stopped by the safety notch unless the trigger is pulled. So, even if the hammer failed to engage the full cock notch and went down when released – if the trigger wasn’t pulled the safety notch should have stopped the hammer.

Draw your own conclusions. We suppose the gun could have been defective, which takes us back to: why was it on the set?

Here’s an update from Daily Mail with more details and it includes the FBI report.

Alec Baldwin was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Halyna Hutchins.

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was the armorer on the film ‘Rust,’ was also charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Halls allegedly handed Baldwin a .45 revolver, telling him that it was “cold,” or safe. Prior to that, Gutierrez-Reed spun the cylinder to show Halls what was in the gun, her lawyer said.

Baldwin has maintained that he did not pull the trigger of the gun – once during a prime-time interview shortly following the deadly shooting and again on a podcast episode. The actor originally said he had pulled the hammer of the gun back as far as he could and released it, but did not pull the trigger.