I’ve worked on film/tv sets for 30 years with plenty of guns. For the gun to get handed off to an actor is the full responsibility of the Armorer. That person’s job is to lock up the gun, NEVER have live rounds on set, only blanks, but most importantly, that gun cannot leave that persons hands until both the first AD and Armorer look inside the gun to make sure nothing is stuck in there ( Brandon Lee ) which was a union rule put in place because of Brandon Lee getting shot and killed on set years ago. Once that’s done the AD will yell out “cold gun on set” I’m also curious why they’d even use a real gun for a rehearsal instead of the rubber one. But so many things went wrong on this set. First, union camera crew quit days before due to safety issues. The armorer had just been fired from a Nick Cage movie because nobody felt safe with her. She was new to the job. IMO the Line Producer is just as guilty for hiring her and non union crews on a union shoot to save money. When shows try to save money and hire less experienced people bad things happen. I worked in Atlanta for 8 years on a tv series and one of our camera assistants was killed by a train because they were told they COULD NOT shoot on a live train track but the producer/director decided to take a small crew and call it a “rehearsal” but actually filmed and my friend was killed. That director was in prison all of maybe 2 years and is still making movies. Meanwhile, I wanted to shoot a scene on a sidewalk with a parking lot in between the train tracks and was told NOT SAFE so I picked another spot.
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