Film and TV prop-masters especially the armorers who handle on-set guns and other weapons are baffled by what happened on the Santa Fe set of “Rust,” leading to the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.  Actor and producer Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun which he was told is safe to use.

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“Hollywood is mourning for sure, and it’s sending reverberations through the entire film community but acutely in the prop world, and very acutely through the armor ranks, of which there’s only 100 or 200 of us at all in the industry,” Dutch Merrick, a property master and past president of IATSE Local 44 Property Craftspersons, told Variety.com.

“This is the worst case scenario and it hurts all of us in the industry,” Merrick added.

While the actual reason behind the incident behind the accident on “Rust” said is yet to be confirmed, it’s clear that the “procedures for use of blank firing guns on set were ignored,” said props expert Michael Corrie via his popular “Props to History” series on TikTok.

“The AD (assistant director) picked up the gun off a cart and did none of the safety checks and declared it a cold gun. Which means it is not loaded with blanks, it’s not capable of firing, etc. It’s a safe weapon to use in the scene. Handed it to the principal actor and told that actor it was in fact ready for use as a safe weapon,” Corrie told Variety.

After the accident, camera operator told authorities that lead actor Alec Baldwin had been careful with weapons on the set of the film. He shot and killed a cinematographer with a gun he’d been told was safe to use.

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“An actor puts a tremendous amount of trust in their prop department, especially armorers and pyrotechnics, those are the things that can literally kill most easily,” Merrick said.

“We go through diligent safety procedures. First being not to have real ammo on the set, or on the truck. And we constantly inspect the ammunition to make sure it’s the appropriate ammunition for that particular firearm. We block out a scene very carefully with the director, the actors, director of photography, and we make sure that everybody is comfortable with the timing.”

The incident occurred at the Bonanza Creek Ranch film set outside Santa Fe, New Mexico on Thursday.

Now, Police have said that there have been no arrests made or charges filed in the case so far, but it remains an “open and active” investigation while production of ‘Rust’, an independent Western film for which Baldwin is a co-producer, has been halted indefinitely.