Alec Baldwin is a liar, and he should spend time behind bars.

That’s the only conclusion I could draw from his recent train wreck of an interview with George Stephanopoulos.

Baldwin claims he doesn’t feel any guilt for shooting and killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. Why? Because he says he never pulled the trigger.

“Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled, I didn’t pull the trigger,” Baldwin said. “I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them, never.”

“I cock the gun. I go, ‘Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?’” Baldwin continued. “And then I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off.”

This magic bullet theory should come as no surprise. Baldwin has been avowedly anti-Second Amendment his entire career, so blaming the gun is a natural go-to excuse.

However, if he had ever bothered to learn anything about guns, he would know that he sounds like an idiot.

The gun being used was a replica Colt single-action revolver. As the United States Concealed Carry Association explains in this excellent video, there’s no way the hammer could have fallen on its own.

It’s far more likely that Bladwin was practicing unsafe gun handling and had his finger on the trigger when he pulled the hammer. If you’ve never practiced keeping your finger off the trigger, it’s natural to squeeze the trigger as your thumb moves back to pull the hammer.

SEE ALSO: Gun Control Meccas See Crime Spike, Nearly 400 Shot in Chicago in September

Some have pointed out that Colt revolvers without a transfer bar safety have gone off accidentally in the past. If the revolver is dropped on the hammer, the force can be enough to ignite the primer (this is, by the way, why cowboys would carry these guns with an empty cylinder in front of the hammer).

But Baldwin doesn’t claim he dropped the gun. He claims the hammer fell on its own, and the hammer wouldn’t have enough momentum to ignite the primer before reaching the quarter-cock position.

Others have theorized that perhaps the gun malfunctioned. If the gun’s hammer detents were not properly engaging, perhaps Baldwin is telling the truth.

This theory doesn’t pass the smell test, either. First, it’s highly unlikely that the gun malfunctioned. In all my experience with firearms, I’ve never seen a Colt single-action break in this way. The design was used for years by the U.S. military, and it’s famously durable.

Even this CNN “gun expert” admitted that he’s never seen this before.

SEE ALSO: Biden to Nominate David Chipman to Handle Gun Control in Afghanistan [Satire]

Furthermore, that same gun was reportedly used by the crew for target practice just days before the fatal incident. How likely is it that the gun was somehow broken or damaged in the hours between being used for target practice and killing Hutchins? Not likely.

Here’s an even more important truth: at the end of the day, the question of whether he pulled the trigger or not isn’t really relevant. Baldwin is responsible for the weapon he was handling, full stop.

Guns do occasionally malfunction, which is why there are four-gun safety rules, not just one. Any NRA member in the country can tell you the four rules:

  1. Treat every weapon as if it was loaded
  2. Never point your weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot
  3. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire
  4. Be sure of your target and what lies beyond it.

Alec Baldwin seems to have forgotten three of these rules. In so doing, he got one person killed, and injured another.

This is basic involuntary manslaughter. In New Mexico, where the shooting occurred, involuntary manslaughter is defined as, “manslaughter committed in the commission of an unlawful act not amounting to felony, or in the commission of a lawful act which might produce death in an unlawful manner or without due caution and circumspection.”

It doesn’t matter whether Baldwin pulled the trigger: he never should have allowed himself to violate the other three rules. The violation of those commonly accepted rules proves the lack of due caution and circumspection, which lead to the death of another.

I realize that accidents happen, and I can’t imagine being responsible for such a tragedy. But Baldwin lost the right to any sympathy when he blamed the gun—rather than himself—for Hutchins’ death.

About The Author

Mark was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and served as the national coordinator. He left the organization to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide. Mark appears regularly on television in outlets as diverse as MSNBC, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CNN, Bloomberg, Fox Business and the BBC. He’s highly sought after for the tea party perspective from print and electronic media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Examiner, Politico and the The Hill. Mark blogs at MarkMeckler.com, and his opinion editorials regularly run in many of the leading political newspapers both on and offline. Mark has a BA in English from San Diego State University and graduated with honors from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in 1988. He practiced real estate and business law for almost a decade. For the last eleven years of his legal career he specialized in Internet advertising law. When not fighting for the future of our nation, Mark is an avid horseman, and lives in rural northern California with his wife Patty and two children.