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‘I Didn’t Pull the Trigger’
Really? That seems unlikely. I mean, that’s how guns work: it’s amazing how unlikely they are to fire if someone’s finger isn’t on the trigger. So, while it’s possible that Mr. Baldwin didn’t pull the trigger, there is about a zero percent probability that he didn’t pull the trigger.
Of course, he didn’t pull the trigger.
(Interesting note: There is such a thing as a possible event that has a zero probability of occurring. Math is an endless buffet.)
Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, DA John Chisolm didn’t pull the trigger when his soft-on-crime bail policies let serial felon Darrell Edward Brooks Jr. out on $1,000 bail less than a month ago when he assaulted and then drove his vehicle into his girlfriend. His mobility restored, Mr. Brooks then committed mass murder and put another few dozen folks into the hospital when he plowed into a Christmas parade last week in Waukesha. (The SUV, of course, receives top billing, since Mr. Brooks is, by virtue of his hue, not useful as an example of America’s purported White Supremacist problem. For what it’s worth, the SUV wasn’t white either.)
Meanwhile, in the City of Brotherly Love and record-breaking homicide, DA Larry Krasner didn’t pull the trigger when he knocked the bail down from $200,000 to zero and then dropped all charges against (alleged) violent serial criminal Latif Williams. Mr. Williams wasted no time in making good on his inexplicable freedom by (allegedly) murdering Tulane Temple University student Samuel Collington three days ago, while attempting to steal the young man’s SUV and shooting him twice because Mr. Collington was reluctant to surrender the vehicle (which belonged to his mother).
Unlike Kyle Rittenhouse, neither Mr. Brooks nor Mr. Williams is a nerdy little white kid carrying a scary gun. They’re just a couple of guys who can’t stay out of trouble, but who manage to stay out of jail thanks to the generosity of prominent Democratic DAs who are more concerned about being woke than doing their jobs.
2022 is coming.
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It’s very unlikely. It would have had to cook off somehow. And then cook off just as he’s pulling the gun out of the holster and aiming it. Just at that exact moment. He’s lying.
Of course he’s lying. Or innocently misremembering. Obviously he pulled the trigger.
Honestly, it sounds more like PTSD. Yes, this is coming from a guy who is nowhere near a doctor. I just know a person who used to say relatively similar things after a tour in Iraq. So take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but I suspect there’s less malice than attributed.
So who did?
And what type of gun was Baldwin holding? Judging from the year the story’s set in, it would have been single action. So who cocked the hammer?
With all the superhero crap Hollywood does these days and audiences are dumb enough to flock to, maybe he figures he can argue somebody on set had superhero capabilities of firing the gun with their mind framing poor little Alec.
Did he have his finger on the trigger?
Another reason I don’t like striker fired pistols: you can’t tell if they’re cocked.
Ooh. I know. He didn’t pull the trigger. He squeezed it, like you are supposed to do.
There’s a thread going in the Firing Line group on this.
Apparently it was an Italian copy of a Colt Single Action Army revolver. Before you can fire a Colt Single Action Army, you have to manually cock the hammer.
I’ve only ever fired modern revolvers, so I don’t have direct experience. But I’ve read in a few places that it’s possible to partially cock the hammer of a Single Action Army so that when you let it go, expecting it to stay in position, it instead falls back down and fires the pistol.
If that’s what happened, I still don’t think it exonerates Baldwin because he apparently didn’t check the cylinder for live rounds and he pointed the pistol at the camera crew – both exceedingly negligent.
But he may be telling the truth about not pulling the trigger.
And for a special bonus, Alex Baldwin’s new theme song:
So this would have required thumbing the hammer while pointing it at the victims. Which is even more difficult and stupid than pulling the trigger. If that’s what actually happened, sorry, no relief.
If he was practicing drawing from a holster quickly and cocking the hammer at the same time, which is a likely scenario since that’s what gunfighters had to do with that pistol, it’s a real possibility.
Agreed – if that’s what happened, it still doesn’t exonerate him.
By the way, I think Baldwin’s interview has us all asking the wrong question, and maybe was intended to.
To me, the question isn’t how he fired the gun, its whether he intentionally, recklessly or negligently shot a woman to death.
Whether or not he pulled the trigger doesn’t answer that question at all.
Hey, hey, hey. I for one, would like to stand behind Mr. Baldwin . . . cause I am certainly not going to stand in front of him.
It also means that the armorer loaded six rounds and had the hammer down on a loaded chamber. Unsafe unless the particular pistol has some modern safety features and certainly not period-appropriate.
People don’t kill people, guns kill people.
People don’t kill people, SUVs kill people.
I say this not to defend Krasner generally – he may be terrible at his job – but in this case this Williams kid’s freedom is likely very explicable. The linked article hints at it, but doesn’t go into it and that could be because it undercuts their argument. As the article indicates, apparently the victim/witness failed to appear at a hearing. This was likely a probable cause hearing, which was necessary to maintain the charge against the kid. So, without a key witness to provide that probable cause, they had to drop the charge. His bond amount became irrelevant at that point because the charges had to be dropped. Not because that’s what the prosecutor wanted, but because he lacked key evidence.
That’s the way we want things to work generally – that we can’t be charged and held without sworn evidence.
No one has a crystal ball, folks. And an enormous number of people with violent criminal histories are given bonds. It’s part of the presumption of innocence. Sometimes, but not usually, they commit additional crimes while out on bond. If someone has a way to know for sure who will do that, and who won’t, please step forward.
Striker-fired pistols have either a small window (for visual inspection) or a device that sticks out to warn you a round is in the chamber. If you loaded it, it’s essentially cocked. Still, the bottom line is treat every gun as if it’s loaded, and don’t point it at anything you don’t intend to shoot.
And I was about to say the same thing. Baldwin had a single-action revolver, which means you have to cock it first. I doubt it was handed to him cocked . . .
I don’t think that’s universal. My P99 has an indicator, as does an old Sig P230 we own. Come to think of it, the P99 indicator just tells you that the striker is cocked, not that a round is chambered.
Weren’t they filming this? If so, wouldn’t there be high def film, possibly from multiple angles? Lots of speculation, when their is likely good evidence to review.
Well, actually, guns, SUVs, and people all kill people. There is no Principle of Conservation of Responsibility.
A single action revolver fires if the hammer falls on a loaded cylinder. That is why the Army usually loaded the 1875 with an empty cylinder under the hammer. If the hammer falls because your thumb slides off before it catches and that fires a round, that is known as “going off half-cocked.”
I’m fine with striking “intentional” off the list, but the other two? They stay.
Twice?
In the end, does anybody expect any jail time for Baldwin? I don’t.
Not at all, but I think the civil suits will cost him dearly.
Well, most of them. My ancient Beretta 418 has a part of the striker that sticks out of the slide if it’s cocked. It’s a .25 so people sneer at it, but 418s protected a lot of shopkeepers in the 40s and 50s.
If the Baldwin pistol was a single action revolver, it’s just conceivable that he could have been cocking the hammer and had his thumb slip off before it locked back. That could allow the hammer to spring forward with enough force to fire a primer. However, he would have to be pretty well coordinated to actually hit something during this process.
He and his wife are so weird I don’t think they can separate reality from fiction anyway. He’s telling ‘his’ truth.
BTW does anyone remember the 30 Rock episode where his character gives another character a prop gun to kill himself with? I suppose that’s edited out by now