Yahoo Finance Alec Baldwin Describes 'Fanning' Detail About Gun In Fatal 'Rust' Shooting
Actor Alec Baldwin is speaking out again about the fatal shooting on the New Mexico set of his film “Rust” last year.
Baldwin, who previously told ABC News he didn’t pull the trigger of the gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on Oct. 21, 2021, stood by the claim in his interview on Tuesday.
On the podcast “Chris Cuomo Live,” the actor described to the former CNN anchor the process of “fanning” a gun after discussing his December 2021 interview with ABC News.
“So if you pull the hammer back and you don’t lock the hammer, if you pull the hammer back pretty far, in old Western movies, you would see someone fan the hammer of the gun,” Baldwin said.
“The hammer didn’t lock, you pulled it back to an extent where it would fire the bullet without you pulling the trigger, without you locking the hammer.”
Baldwin then reiterated that the principal safety officer on the “Rust” set had declared the gun to be “safe,” what was called a “cold gun.”
“Now, why did he say that if he didn’t know and hadn’t checked? The point is we were told everything was cool and you can relax and we are working with a gun that is safe to rehearse with,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin, a producer and the star of the Western, has said he was told to handle the gun as Hutchins and director Joel Souza set up a scene. Souza was also injured when the gun fired.
Baldwin declared that there’s only “one question” to ask about the shooting: “Who put a live round in the gun?”
“There is no other question to ask.”
Later in the interview with Cuomo, Baldwin said he was not the victim of the “Rust” tragedy. “Now my point is that the real tragedy here is what happened to [Hutchins].”
You can see Baldwin’s complete interview with Cuomo below.
The interview comes just days after an FBI forensic report determined the gun used in the shooting couldn’t fire without pulling the trigger.
Baldwin’s attorney Luke Nikas, in a statement to ABC News and NPR, wrote that the report was “misconstrued.”
A report from the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator on Monday found the shooting to be an accident, The Associated Press reported.
Prosecutors haven’t decided whether to press charges in the shooting case, according to the news service, saying they’d look at the reports and continue to seek Baldwin’s phone records.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
