Preliminarily, it is tragic that 42-year-old Halyna Hutchins, a rising cinematographer in Hollywood, died yesterday on the set of Rust, a movie being filmed in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  My thoughts are with the loved ones she left behind.  Having said that, I cannot escape a feeling that karma had a hand in this one because the finger on the trigger of the gun that killed Hutchins belonged to Alec Baldwin, a hysterical leftist who is fanatically opposed to the Second Amendment.

To give a sense of Baldwin's hostility to gun rights, in 2018, the smug and constitutionally illiterate Baldwin had some harsh words for Dana Loesch, an NRA spokeswoman:

I see that @DLoesch wants to “take back the truth.”
And she doesn’t care how many dead bodies she has to step over in that pursuit.
The Second Amendment is not a moral credit card that buys you all the guns you want.
That law needs to be rethought.

— AlecBaldwin(HABF) (@AlecBaldwin) March 5, 2018

Despite his supreme arrogance, Baldwin clearly does not understand that the Second Amendment is not a mere "law."  It's the expression of a right inherent in citizens of a free country.

But what was especially interesting about that tweet was that bit about Loesch stepping over dead bodies.  As it happens, Loesch has never killed anyone.  Indeed, at a guess, upwards of 99.9% of law-abiding American gun-owners will go through life not only not killing anyone, but also never even having to use their guns against another person.  But Alec Baldwin killed someone with a gun.  He has a body count.

According to the information currently available, Baldwin fired a prop gun that somehow launched a projectile, killing Hutchins and injuring Joel Souza, the film's writer and director.  This probably reminds you of Brandon Lee's death in 1993.  Then, a prop gun had been carelessly left with a round in the barrel, so a subsequent blank round with a powder charge created enough energy to propel the bullet with full force into Lee's abdomen, killing him almost instantly.

What happened to poor Hutchins on the set of Rust somehow perfectly exemplifies Hollywood's hypocritical polarity when it comes to guns.  In movie after movie, guns play a prominent role.  The good guys always have fantastic speed and aim, laying waste to the bad guys.  The latter can't shoot straight and will shoot twelve rounds from a six-shooter, missing every time.  Hollywood, more than any institution in America, sells the glamour and power of guns.

Meanwhile, once off the set, Hollywood's hard-left actors are stridently opposed to guns.  Baldwin's foolish tweet to Dana Loesch is just one small example of his entire anti-gun oeuvre, a fashionable Hollywood stance.  After Sandy Hook, Baldwin was out in front announcing that "a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons is a necessary first step toward resuscitating the soul of this country."

Things might have turned out differently if Baldwin had bothered to learn about the guns he so hates.  He might have known that you never point a gun, any gun, at someone or something you don't intend to kill.  He might also have known that you never assume that a gun is unloaded or in "neutral" mode.  Had he had some gun savvy, he would have checked the gun to make sure it was indeed a harmless prop.  He would also have pointed it away from any living target.  After all, the cameras would never pick up a faint deviation in aim.

Part of me pities Baldwin a great deal.  He was seen weeping outside the sheriff's office because, while he is an arrogant, entitled, aggressive, obnoxious git, he's not a killer.  His entire self-image is of someone who defends life (never mind that he's fanatically pro-abortion).  Now, though, he's taken a life, something that will haunt him forever.  That deserves compassion because all of us go through life knowing that one stupid, thoughtless moment (perhaps a moment of inattention when driving) could see each of us take a life, too.

However, there's no getting around the fact that what happened on that movie set highlights Hollywood's damaging duality about the Second Amendment: it loves guns because they're a profit center, bringing people to movies to see enjoyable gunfights.

Hollywood, not the NRA, is what encourages illegal guns and bad gun hygiene.  And then, when the cameras stop rolling, people like Baldwin work hard to take guns from responsible, informed, law-abiding people, leaving them only in the hands of criminals and, like Baldwin himself, fools.

Image: Alec Baldwin.  YouTube screen grab.

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