Actor Alec Baldwin was a notable anti-gun voice well before the shooting on the set of the film Rust. Despite his belief that guns are dangerous, he reported played around with his prop revolver and took absolutely no safety precautions, which resulted in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
He’s about to go on trial for her death.
There are a number of facts in dispute, but what doesn’t seem to be is that the gun was in Baldwin’s hand when it went off, that it didn’t “just go off” according to the FBI lab, and that the bullet fired from that gun killed Hutchins.
In fact, he became the poster boy for irresponsible gun handling in that instant.
Now, let’s contrast that with two other cases, both also involving a trial. George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse both garnered a great deal of fame because they shot and killed people, then stood trial for those killings.
Where there’s a difference between those two and Baldwin is that both claimed they were acting in self-defense and, in a court of law, were acquitted of murder because they were acting in self-defense.
Both Rittenhouse and Zimmerman have been continually hounded. Zimmerman reportedly can’t keep a job because every time he gets one, the anti-gunners harass the business until they let him go. Rittenhouse has gone a different route, but he too has been hounded everywhere he goes.
Yet Baldwin, by contrast, isn’t just ignored by anti-gunners. No, he’s getting a reality show.
The actor and producer, who has seven kids under age 10 with his wife, announced the TLC reality show about their life as a party of nine. “The Baldwins,” the show’s working title, is set to release in 2025.
“We’re inviting you into our home to experience the ups and downs, the good, the bad, the wild and the crazy,” Baldwin said in a video he shared to Instagram on Tuesday.
In the announcement video, the couple joked about Hilaria announcing another pregnancy, but she said they are done having kids before the clip cut to a chaotic shot of their children screaming and the parents struggling to wrangle the bunch for a group photo.
Well isn’t that sweet.
While the AP report does acknowledge Baldwin’s legal troubles, about all that’s likely to happen is a hiatus in filming during the trial and any potential incarceration. Or maybe they won’t and use that to heighten the drama.
Regardless, Baldwin appears as guilty as they come to me and to a lot of other people, yet while two men who were found to have acted in self-defense are harassed everywhere they try to go, a man who has no such defense for taking the life of an innocent woman is getting a reality show.
It’s disgusting.
What’s more, it illustrates the hypocrisy so rampant in anti-gun circles. Just like they’re remaining silent on Hunter Biden’s gun charges, they’ve also been silent about the charges facing Baldwin. They’re ready to throw literally any person who acts in self-defense under the bus, but these two clearly did something wrong–even at a minimum, Baldwin’s mishandling of the gun led to Hutchins’s death, even if it wasn’t actually manslaughter–and all we hear are the crickets.
For all their talk about being about safety, they definitely should have had something to say about Baldwin.
Especially when he seems to be motoring on with his career like absolutely nothing happened.
I might feel differently if he’d admitted he screwed up, that it was unintentional but he was still responsible and was ready to accept whatever came of those mistakes, but he hasn’t. He’s continued to claim he did nothing wrong.
And while those who actually did nothing wrong can barely function in society thanks to anti-gun voices, a man who (allegedly) committed manslaughter doesn’t hear crap.
If I weren’t already done being lectured by Hollywood, I would be now.
