Mostly I am waiting for some official account to answer questions. I keep seeing various experts on tv speculating. A number of people know what happened and things like whether it was a bullet in the gun. The fact that they haven't said is concerning. It is just so heartbreaking for all concerned.

AD Fired From Previous Film Following Prop Gun Discharge

Well, that seems like a disturbing pattern

That seems like a gigantic lawsuit waiting to be unleashed.

That is true

That seems like a gigantic lawsuit waiting to be unleashed.

Somebody in the commentariat-verse noted that this incident is the outgrowth of (a) vastly increased film/TV production as streaming services are all creating new content; and (b) digital film creating cheaper production costs; plus, (c) many investors are using film production as a tax dodge.

So to feed this vastly increased demand for new filmed content you've got all these new crews out there, shooting on the cheap and looking to cut corners at every turn. They don't have experienced people in key jobs and they don't have the production experience / institutional knowledge to understand why labor/time intensive safety practices were put in place originally.

I can see all of those things having an effect, but they mostly look like excuses to me thanks to COVID. Production is still down and skilled people are out of work. The things that are shooting are using smaller casts and crews than they would have. Even with restrictions loosening to the degree they have much of that new content uses simple setups with as few people you need to spend money testing (usually twice) as possible.

In this case at least the errors were SO basic. Lock up the guns. Don't hand them to an actor without them being opened in front of you. Don't take them without them being opened in front of you. There's no level of expertise that would have made a succession of people (who all knew better) ignoring really basic rules safe. The culture of this environment was bad and dangerous and IATSE members had already walked over it.

In this case at least the errors were SO basic.

That's true, there was no adherence to even the basic protocols.

And no matter how inexperienced the rest of the crew is, the AD in question has 25 years of experience in the business; he was on the crew for one of the Crow sequels, for fuck’s sake.

He damn well knows he isn’t supposed to be handling guns on set.

From the articles I read it sounds like Halls didn't give a damn about safety at all and was more worried about getting things done.