"Armorer Larry Zanoff has supervised the use of guns and ammunition in movies and TV productions for more than 20 years. He said that the industry standards for handling firearms and blank ammunition are actually very stringent.
"The prop master and or the armorer are the people that are responsible on set for firearms, and they would have a chain of custody the entire time that the firearms are outside of any kind of lock up box or safe," Zanoff said.
Zanoff said the first assistant director is the most important safety person on set. They are the ones to dictate when to bring the guns on set and whether the gun will be a "cold gun" or a "hot gun."
"A cold gun would be totally unloaded, nothing in it," said Zanoff. "A hot gun would be one loaded with a blank and ready to do gunfire. The guns should not get loaded until the first [assistant director] directs the armorer to load the specific gun."
On the set of "Rust," records indicated that the assistant director, Dave Halls, was allegedly the one who handed Baldwin the gun and incorrectly advised that the gun was a "cold gun," loaded without any live rounds, according to a
search warrant from Santa Fe County obtained by ABC News.
Zanoff said live ammunition is not allowed on a television or film set, instead, blanks are used. ...
"Obviously, something went terribly wrong in this particular incident. It needs to be investigated. Law enforcement is investigating right now and when they come out with their determination of exactly what happened," he added. "I'm fairly confident that we'll see that the actual industry guidelines were not being followed."
On-set prop gun supervisor walks through safety procedures, industry standards