when i first heard about Death of cinematographer Halina Hutchins Director Joel Souza injured on the sets of And WarI felt a familiar gut-punch.
One evening in the spring of 1975, when I was twelve years old, my father, a gunsmith, unintentionally shot our neighbor while buying a defective pistol at a gun shop in our backyard in southeastern Pennsylvania. were testing. He fired one round, which hit a wooden target under a window. Then, unbeknownst to him, another round discharged, punched a hole in the window, crossed our neighbor’s driveway, entered his garage, and ripped through his stomach and out his back. He had gone in there for a gardening tool and crawled out fighting for his life. I ran from my swing to my father’s voice, over my neighbor’s body crying out for help. Peeping over a wrought iron fence, I tried to make sense of the scene. Less than two days later, our neighbor died.
Immediately afterwards and in the decades since, I’ve been trying to make sense How could this happen in the first place. News accounts alleged that my father’s business was illegal in a residential area, that he had never received a zoning variance, and that it was illegal to carry a firearm in our neighborhood. Yet no criminal charges were brought against him. It was deemed an “accident”. As a kid, I was relieved. I didn’t want my father to go to jail. But I also felt ashamed because I knew that on some level he was at fault.
When I later went to graduate school for urban planning and became a homeowner myself, my understanding of the purpose of zoning deepened. Why didn’t the circle officer of our city implement the law? Why did the police regularly bring their weapons to my father’s shop? When I dug up the civil suit filed by the widow against my parents and our town, I came to know that they are neighbors Was He complained to city officials about the test-firing taking place in the store before the shooting, but no one heeded his alarm.
are the same as in my town in 1975 multilevel system To ensure the safe use of firearms in the production of any film, Clearly those systems failed on October 21, 2021. Now, Alec Baldwin, who fired the shot that killed Hutchins, and Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the prop armorer responsible for firearms on set, have each charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter, Notably, Dave Halles, the assistant director who gave Baldwin the gun, took a plea deal in which he took responsibility for reckless use of a deadly weapon.
It’s discouraging to read the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA Statement In response to the allegations against Baldwin, “the guidelines do not make it the responsibility of the performer to check any firearm. Performers are trained to perform, and they are not required or expected to be experts in firearms or experienced in their use.” That no person shall possess any firearm without understanding its mechanics or assuming a high degree of responsibility for the safety of all persons in the vicinity fundamentals of firearms safety,
If I were an actor and I had to use a gun in a scene, I would definitely know how to start the action, check the chamber, and identify dummy vs. live ammunition before I go into that. Point the gun at another human being. However, is it only because my twelve-year-old self saw how a bullet can suddenly end a life? I knew I could never trust my father after that. He put me, my entire family, and our neighbors at risk to test-drive him multiple times in that store. In my experience, firearms “experts” are not infallible. I want to be an active part of the process of checking and rechecking to make sure that the firearm was in fact a “cold gun”, the term used to denote an empty firearm or one with a dummy round .
Actors prepare deeply for their roles in a myriad of ways. The notion that they are under no obligation to understand how to operate a potentially lethal prop is a kind of magical thinking. Requiring actors using a gun in a scene to know how to handle that specific gun provides another layer of protection. enforcing that requirement and all other safeguards are already in place every time demands an unwavering commitment to everyone’s lives on set.
My family has always called our neighbor’s shooting and death an “accident.” This was not an accident. It was an unintentional shooting. It was preventable. And so was Halina Hutchins’ death.
Sue Repko is an author and gun violence prevention advocate. She has written a memoir about her relationship with her father.