Alec Baldwin ignored the golden rule of gun safety and it should never have ...

Alec Baldwin ignored the golden rule of gun safety by pointing the prop at someone but the gun never should have been loaded with live ammunition to begin with, experts say. 

Zak Knight, a pyrotechnic and special effects engineer who is a member of Local 44, told DailyMail.com on Friday:  'There should have never been live rounds on a movie set, that's number one. Number two is every single person on a movie set has a right to inspect a weapon before it's fired. And number three is, there is no reason to ever put a person in front of a weapon that's firing.

'Anytime you see a movie where the barrel is pointed down the camera lens, there should not be an operator behind it. It's obvious that the considerations of this resulted in that gun being pointed directly at two people.

'We would have additionally had a barrier between them. A large number of people failed to do our protocols... every accident is a cascade of events,' he said.  

Whatever happened in the moments leading up to her death, Knight said it was caused by a 'cascade of failures' by multiple people. 'We have a hard and fast rule that no live ammunition ever goes into a prop truck or set at any time. We just don't do it. 

'If you see bullets on set they are complete dummy rounds and are in no way functional. This goes back to Brandon Lee. There's protocol.' Lee was killed in a similar incident when another actor shot him with a prop gun that was loaded with live ammunition while filming The Crow in 1993. 

Knight added that different gun laws between New Mexico and California may have also contributed to the accident. In California, both a trained armorer and a prop master is required on a film set and those are the standards the union adheres to as well.

'You will find the best and most well-trained individuals in Los Angeles. You can't guarantee that as you go across the country,' he told DailyMail.com on Friday.

Knight said that he'd heard from others involved in the production that there was a walk-out. 'It's very possible that the union members said 'we're out', and they brought in people to fill the positions on the fly. There's a lot of grey area.'

In the days before the tragedy, IATSE had been threatening a large-scale strike that would have crippled Hollywood production. Among the complaints were overworking staff and poor rates. Baldwin recorded a video of himself encouraging the union members to strike if they felt they needed to, saying studio bosses 'don't give a f**k about you', that the union shared online.

'There's a direct correlation between maintaining a safe set and the hours that we work. At a certain time there's no such thing as a safe set if we're all exhausted,' Knight, a special effects artist, said.  

One Santa Fe prop master told DailyMail.com that had the gun been checked properly before it was handed to Baldwin, the tragedy wouldn't have occurred. 

'If they'd done their job checking the weapon this wouldn't have happened. You show the assistant director the weapon, you show the actor the weapon, you show everybody it's a safe weapon. There's a big chain of command that missed an opportunity to save a life.'

Baldwin first addressed the tragedy on Twitter Friday: 'There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours. I'm fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and'

'I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family. My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.'

He then tweeted a Variety article titled Alec Baldwin Was Told Prop Gun Was Safe Before Fatal Shooting, Affidavit Says. 

He was pictured doubled over in grief on Thursday after speaking to the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Department immediately following the shooting. 

Hutchins' husband shared a touching tribute to his wife on Twitter on Friday. Matthew Hutchins tweeted a photo of his wife and their 9-year-old son Andros on Friday captioned: 'Halyna inspired us all with her passion and vision, and her legacy is too meaningful to encapsulate in words. 

'Our loss is enormous, and we ask that the media please respect my family’s privacy as we process our grief. We thank everyone for sharing images and stories of her life.' 

His Facebook profile picture is a photo of the couple who had been married for 16 years. His bio now reads: 'We miss you, Halyna.' 

A private memorial was held in Santa Fe last night with Matthew, Andros, and Baldwin in attendance, according to ShowBiz411. It was reported that grief counselors were present at the service. 

The grieving husband told DailyMail.com on Friday morning that he had spoken with the actor. 'I have spoken with Alec Baldwin and he is being very supportive,' he said.

A public memorial will be held in Albuquerque Saturday from 6 - 7:30 pm. A GoFundMe page has been created by the International Cinematographers Guild Local 600 to raise funds to support her family. 

The American Film Institute has established a memorial scholarship to support aspiring female cinematographers in her honor. 

The 24-year-old head armorer in charge of guns on the film had admitted she wasn't sure she was ready for the job in an interview before filming started. 

'I almost didn't take the job because I wasn't sure if I was ready, but doing it, it went really smoothly,' Hannah Gutierrez-Reed said in a podcast interview last month after leading the firearms department for The Old Way, starring Nicolas Cage - her first time as head armorer.   

She also admitted in the podcast interview she found loading blanks into a gun 'the scariest' thing because she did not know how to do it and had sought help from her father, legendary gunsmith Thell Reed, to get over the fear.  

It comes as the film crew revealed they walked off set hours before the fatal accident over safety fears after firearms were accidentally discharged three times - including once by Baldwin's stunt double who had been told the gun was not loaded, and twice in a closed cabin. 

A search warrant released Friday said that Gutierrez-Reed laid out three prop guns on a cart outside the filming location, and first assistant director Dave Halls grabbed the gun from the cart and brought it inside to Baldwin, unaware that it was loaded with live rounds. 

'Cold gun!' shouted Halls before handing the gun to Baldwin, using the phrase to signal to cast and crew that the gun was safe to fire for the scene, the warrant said.  

Scroll down for video 

Seconds later, filming a scene inside an Old West-style church, Baldwin apparently aimed towards the camera and pulled the trigger, accidentally killing Hutchins as she filmed him, and injuring director Joel Souza, who stood behind her. 

Neither Halls nor Gutierrez-Reed immediately returned messages from DailyMail.com late on Friday. Neither has been charged or named as a criminal suspect in the case, though a police investigation is ongoing.  

The movie, set in 1880's Kansas, stars Baldwin as the infamous outlaw Harland Rust, whose grandson is sentenced to hang for an accidental murder.  

In the interview with the Voices of the West last month, Gutierrez-Reed revealed her father only started teaching her about guns at age 16 and that most of her training had happened in the last couple of years. 

She described filming The Old Way earlier in the year as the start of a 'long' career. 

According to her LinkedIn page, she most recently worked as a videographer at Synth Fire, a California-based news and media company, and as a documentary filmmaker for the City of Flagstaff in Arizona. 

She worked as an armorer for Yellowstone film ranch between March and June 2021, but according to the page stopped working there three months before filming for Rust started in October.

Gutierrez-Reed had only recently left Northern Arizona university, where she studied creative media and film between 2017 and 2020.  

Meanwhile Halls is a veteran assistant director with scores of credits on productions involving prop guns, including Fargo, The Matrix Reloaded, and the TV cop comedy Reno 911. 

In 2000, Halls was the second unit's first assistant director on The Crow: Salvation, the sequel to the film in which Bruce Lee's son Brandon Lee was killed in an on-set firearms mishap in 1993.   

The warrant said that a single bullet struck Hutchins in the chest, and then struck director Joel Souza in the shoulder as he was standing behind her, injuring him, suggesting the bullet traveled all the way through Hutchins' body. 

The gun that fired the fatal shot was a vintage-style Colt revolver, DailyMail.com has exclusively learned. 

After the shooting, the armorer took possession of the gun and a spent casing, which were turned over to police, along with other prop guns and ammunition used on the set. 

Baldwin also changed out of the Western costume he was wearing, which was stained with blood, and turned it over to police.

The warrant does not reveal the model or caliber of the prop gun that fired the fatal bullet, but the film is set in the Old West of the 1880s and DailyMail.com has learned it was a Colt.

The warrant was obtained Friday so that investigators could document the scene at the ranch where the shooting took place. 

Unionized workers had walked off the set hours before the fatal shooting, after they complained about long hours, shoddy conditions and another safety incident days earlier involving 'two misfires' of a prop weapon. 

A yet-unnamed prop master who oversaw the gun used in the fatal shooting was a non-union worker who was 'just brought in' to replace the workers who left over safety concerns, a source involved in the movie told the New York Post.

It's unclear whether Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer, had recently joined the production, or was one of the crew members who stayed behind after the walk-off. 

However, a link in her Instagram bio points to an article about Rust from May, suggesting she had been attached to the production for some time. 

Unionized employees had been complaining about the fact they had to stay overnight in Albuquerque - an hour's drive from the set - and not Sante Fe because production wouldn't pay for their hotels, according to sources cited by The Los Angeles Times and multiple social media posts by film and TV insiders. 

When they turned up to set to clear their things on Thursday, they found they'd been replaced by locals. 

It begs the question of who those local workers were, what their training was and to what extent did they check the weapon before it was handed to Baldwin.  

Deadline also cites an unnamed source who said a gun had gone off 'in a cabin' while someone was holding it, days prior to the shooting that killed Hutchins.

'A gun had two misfires in a closed cabin. They just fired loud pops – a person was just holding it in their hands and it went off,' they said, apparently referring to unintentional discharges.   

Rust Production LLC did not respond to repeated requests for comment from DailyMail.com on Friday about the incident, but members of the union that represents many of the crew who were involved in the production said they had expressed fears about on-set safety.