more thorough, emptying their pockets, just making sure that they were safe as possible before they were allowed to enter a hot set. yeah. now, ian hudson, one of the actors on the set, who i quoted at the top of the show, told tmz that more experienced actors check a prop gun or a weapon two or three times before they use it. is there some or should there be some onus on baldwin to check that? should he have checked it? in my experience, most of the actors that i work with will sit with me and we will check the weapon before the weapon goes onset. is it their responsibility? in some way it is, but the majority of that typically falls on either the armorer or the prop master handing them the weapon, which did not happen in this situation. i understand you have a prop gun to show us what that check should look like. can you give us an idea?
safety. and that weapon has to be inspected before it goes anywhere. otherwise, we will end up with another tragedy. when you say it has to be inspected before it goes anywhere, on this practice of plinking, where in down time, some of the crew members, i guess, it s target practice with live ammo. how common is that? i ve never done that on a set. i would not allow any weapon that s going to be used onset to be used with live ammunition during down time. any of our prop weapons are secured when they re not on camera. they re put in a lock box. they re stored away. any professional in this industry, whether it be the phenomenal guys at iss props or the specialists here in new york, they take safety to another level, and something like this would never happen on a professional set. a tragedy on many levels. joseph fisher, thank you so much for your expertise and helping
yes, i do. okay. this is a prop nonfiring weapon. i m going to be keeping it pointed in a safe direction during the demonstration. okay. with the weapon like the one they were using on set, the more historical weapons, they have a built-in clearing rod, which is right in here. okay. that rod gets pushed from the front to the back of the weapon, and you can see let me open the port here. you can see the rod extend past. that tells me there is nothing in that particular chamber. you would advance to the next chamber, repeat the process with the actor so they verify that each of the six cylinders are clear and empty on the weapon. in addition to that, you would take a rod, you would insert the rod down the barrel. this weapon has to have a plug barrel so i cannot go all the way through. but what you would want to see is the rod extending through
into the chamber of the barrel. once that s done, the weapon is considered safe, cleerkar, and empty, and you would be able to pass that weapon to the actor. with a revolver, it s a little bit easier. once again, this is a prop, nonfiring weapon. yeah. you d be able to open the chamber and do a visual inspection of the chamber, one by one. you would then also do a rod check, putting the rod through, making sure you could see the rod coming through the barrel without any debris or any build-up or foreign objects on it. now, that is the way that it s supposed to happen, and i thank you for that demonstration. it makes a lot of it more clear, what should have happened. but is that what always happens? i mean, we understand that sometimes safety precautions are lax. you can t compromise on safety, whether you re on a high budget set or a low budget set. there s no compromise for