The armor will almost certainly face negligence charges for handing a live round in the chamber to an actor on set they failed in their primary job to ensure that every weapon on set is certified and verified as a cold weapon. Since it is not the skill set nor responsibility of an actor to second guess their professional armor who is tasked with ensuring cold weapons it will be hard to convince a grand jury to bring charges. Movie sets are extenuating circumstances by definition. Where else can you legally point a real weapon at someone and pull the trigger even with blanks loaded. Do that in your local wallyworld and you don’t get shot by a third party of the person you are aiming at you absolutely will get hit with, brandishing a firearm,reckless discharge of a firearm. If the state has menacing charges as well. All those don’t apply on a movie set when there is a legitimate reason to be pointing and discharging real firearms albeit with blanks at another human.
The actor in this case was performing a dry run rehearsal while being positioned by the photographer in the pointing and use of that weapon the industry term is angles. It will be difficult to jump to negligence when he was under active instructions on where to point that declared cold gun. The expectation of everyone on scene is after the armor issues and declared a cold gun it’s safe to be in front of as scenes often call for shooting directly at someone that’s how the industry ensures safety. There was a reasonable expectation not only by the actor but every one else on scene that the gun was safe to be positioned near or pointed towards another human. The argument will be was the hammer dropped by accident it’s hot in NM sweat ,hand oils ect could cause a thumb to slip off the hanmer. Any modern firearm this is not a problem click nothing happens. It is a near certainty that the actor did not know of the safety flaw in these old guns especially if this model comes in two forms that are externally identical it’s likely the armor didn’t know this gun was the historically accurate version either. From the report the photographer instructed on the angles of the gun and then said you will be cocking the gun which the actor complied and.cocked the gun which for some reason unknown as of now the hammer never went to full cock it dropped From half cock and in a period piece went off as most of these era guns will do exactly the same thing given the same treatment.
Huh, Are you like some crazy Lin Wood lawyer? You need to respond to my pointing out NM law on negligent discharge and homicide.