I don’t think he was supposed to be handling it... wasn’t the armorer outside? She was supposed to be the last person to handle it before giving it to an actor.
For the others on this thread, I’m cross-posting this link from the other thread that I replied to you on, regarding how this all works on a movie set (I know you probably saw it):
*This is how it works - posted on David Gold’s FB page by the cousin of a long-time (33 years) electrical best boy on numerous films, Thomas “Moose” Enright:
https://www.facebook.com/debbie.obar/posts/10158897930159209
The procedures are *not* the same as in our real lives.
By his description, it sounds like a case where the multiple layers of people being responsible for checking had the opposite of their intended effect. Each person in the chain assumed the previous person had performed the proper check, and skipped doing it themselves. This post says the armorer should be the one who hands out weapons, but I have heard elsewhere that the armorer is supposed to hand them to the AD, who is supposed to perform his own double check. But having one person solely responsible for checking and handing out the weapons would avoid this mistake of someone thinking someone else already did the work.
This post thinks the armorer was playing with the guns on break, left them on a cart still loaded, walked away, and then the AD grabbed them, thinking they were loaded with blanks. That seems to be contradicted by reporting elsewhere in this thread though, which says the gun was inspected after the shooting and was found to have dummy rounds in it.
It is a case for Columbo.
Somebody wanted her dead.