Bill Maher Alleges COVID-19 Safety Concerns Led To Fatal 'Rust' Shooting

Comedian Bill Maher is alleging that COVID-19 safety protocols are what ultimately led to actor Alec Baldwin misfiring the gun that struck cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and director Joel Souza on October 21, 2021, on the set of the Western film “Rust.”

Baldwin and “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed have since been charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter while first assistant director David Halls pled guilty to the charge of the negligent use of a deadly weapon.

Although Baldwin, “Rust” producers, and several other individuals and entities are facing civil lawsuits in the shooting, Bill Maher puts the blame on COVID-19 safety protocols for the fatal shooting.

On the Sunday edition of his podcast, Club Random, Bill Maher interviewed TMZ founder Harvey Levin (as per Daily Mail). Levin said that the “Alec Baldwin case” was BS, calling it a “ridiculous prosecution where they’re just grabbing headlines.”

After Levin called the criminal charges “outrageous,” Maher said, “We almost always agree, which is great. And I said the same. I mean, like, I would just put it this way. Do you think Alec Baldwin purposely shot this cinematographer? If no, then what are we talking about?”

Maher later pointed out that the fatal shooting was “not the same thing as getting drunk, where you have culpability.” Levin agreed, stating that the armorer responsible for loading the gun with live ammunition should take the focus on the blame.

That being said, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer Jason Bowles has previously claimed that she did not inspect the gun on the day of the fatal shooting. He alleges that David Halls told her that he would come and get her when they were ready to film; however, he did not.

The 67-year-old comedian went on to blame COVID-19 safety protocols for the fatal shooting. “What I think happened was that they were so concerned about f---ing COVID-19 masks. That’s my theory,” he said before admitting, “I’m just pulling this out of my a—but it could be true. I think that, you know, everyone, it’s so typical of how America reacts to everything – wrong.”

“You know, always scared of the wrong things, and they could have been so apoplectic about everything COVID,” he continued. “And these germs on their set that they… therefore forgot about the bullets and the gun.”

“I mean, if I was rewriting this as a play, that’s what I would do, to make that point about what I think America does when it is confronted with the crisis,” he added.

However, the armorer who they initially wanted for the job recently came forward with a different theory about what really happened on the "Rust" set.

Although Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was eventually hired by the “Rust” production team, armorer Scott Rasmussen, who has been working in the industry since the 1980s, told KRQE News that he had been initially selected to work as the armorer on the film set.

The Hollywood armorer and prop master has worked with many Hollywood stars over the decades, including Sam Elliot, John Travolta, and Eric Roberts. He was initially asked to take on both the roles of prop master and armorer, but he had concerns about how many firearms would be present on set.

“I felt comfortable with doing it until I read the script and it was a lot of guns everywhere throughout the show,” he told the local news affiliate. “So, I felt it would be safer for me just to be the armorer on the show.”

Rasmussen claims that producers were okay with that and told him that they would get back to him. Instead, he says that they ghosted him and later found out that they hired Gutierrez-Reed, who had much less experience, to take on both jobs.

“I wholeheartedly believe they saw that I had the experience so they probably assumed that I’d be wanting an arm and a leg and so, they go with somebody that they got for a relatively cheap price,” he said, adding, “They decided to save a few pennies here and there and we, unfortunately, had a bad accident happen.”