A common criminal defense tactic is the "other guy" defense. Even if a defense attorney cannot make a plausible case against an "other guy," they often do all they can to foster dislike and suspicion by making an "other guy" appear to be a bad guy. Baldwin and Reed appear to be setting Seth up as their "other guy," with Baldwin tacitly blaming the prop gun that Seth provided as somehow defective and Thell Reed -- no doubt with defense lawyer approval -- smearing Seth as, in effect, stealing a supply of live ammo by not returning what was left over from a session of target practice.
Published reports though indicate that on the weekend before the accidental shooting, the crew had been firing live rounds in the desert near the set using one or more of the prop guns. This could easily account for one or more live rounds being left in the prop gun or mixed into its ammo supply when it was prepped by the on-set armorer and eventually handed to Baldwin.
Between the supplier of the prop guns (Seth Kenney) and the on set armorer (Hannah Gutierrez-Reed), who seems more likely to have permitted and facilitated the crew's recreational live ammo firing for fun? Obviously, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the on set armorer -- using ammo supplied by her father, Thell Reed.
In any event, it seems that because the fatal bullet apparently came from one of Thell Reed's reloads of a dummy round casing in a gun prepped by his daughter as armorer, he felt a need to offer up Seth publicly as a potential source for that round. Otherwise, the most logical inference is that Reed himself provided such live ammo directly to his daughter.
My guess is that the essential facts of the shooting will be determined and blame properly assessed within a few months. After several decades of development of criminal justice as an academic discipline and the refinement of forensic science, cops are now pretty good at processing crime scenes and interrogating witnesses. The old tactic of figuring out who looks guilty and then bullying them into a confession is now mostly barred by courts anyway.
Yes, passing the buck is the game for now. And who wouldn’t?
Your cousin will no doubt be part of the goulash, but my guess is the defense attorney will attempt to try “the inherently unsafe SA revolver” as the culprit.
SA’s are a mystery even to 90% of shooters. To non-shooters, you might as well be talking about using “Single-Phase Targon Z-Ray Lasers on Planet Q.”
It will be easy for the defense to bamboozle and befuddle the non-shooter jury over subtle and mysterious SA revolver mechanisms.
By the time the jury acquits Baldwin, they will be more than ready to indict Samuel Colt for his dangerous invention.