CNN had this online a couple days ago.
New Mexico state senator introduces gun safety training bill months after ‘Rust’ film set death
You can click-thru if you’d like, but I’ll summarize and discuss here.
New Mexico State Senator Cliff Pirtle introduced a bill that would require up to date safety certifications for anyone on a film crew that will be around firearms and ammunition. Cast and crew who will be handling or around the firearms must have or take a safety course.
Considering how much we require this for other professional safety considerations it makes sense.
We literally have OSHA, an entire administrative organization dedicated to occupational safety. This is the type of gun control rule that has some professional legs to stand on. It is circumstantial and is not tied to an individual right to possess or not possess a firearm. It is directly tied to a workplace environment where firearms are being handled in a manner that will almost certainly result in them being pointed at other people. It’s the movies.
With the risk factor high, somewhere close to live fire training and in certain aspects riskier than live fire training, having a standard for safety in the workplace is an argument I am willing to entertain.
Why?
Again, we do it for everything else. We do it for forklifts, outsized vehicles, special lifting equipment, assembly machines, and even just watching for slip and fall hazards in the workspace. None of these are tied to owning, just operating professionally. With that in mind, having a professional educational safety requirement is right in line with work safety practices nationwide.
With the fact that firearms are a lesser known and a taboo subject, having a professional standard becomes even more important as general knowledge will be very hit and miss and the quality of that knowledge will be equally suspect. That is a side effect of putting the negative connotations upon firearms.
Want proof?
We did it for sex and recreational substance use too, and those clearly have zero problems associated with making them absurdly negative connotatively. Right?
Here is what it comes down to. Because of the workplace nature of this safety bill, it makes sense. The only hurdle (and it isn’t much of one, Firearm Safety isn’t astrophysics) is in designing an appropriate handling course or picking them from available ones. Perhaps scaling them to coincide with the level of handling expected by the cast or crew member once the basics are satisfied.
Shows like Strike Back and movie productions like Extraction and John Wick put heavy emphasis on safety and training, it shows in the end product. Making this a standard, instead of a quality ‘best practice’ that can be eschewed if budgets look a little budgety, is worth considering.
