The FBI has now confirmed what everyone familiar with guns knew anyway: The only way that the gun used by Alec Baldwin to kill Halyna Hutchins could have fired was for him to cock the gun and pull the trigger.
Baldwin, however, continues to insist that the gun ‘just went off,’ although his story has changed slightly.
Baldwin now claims that ‘fanning’ the gun could make it go off, and that’s what he was doing. And that does work with single-action revolvers like the one he used. But fanning requires holding the trigger down, i.e., pulling the trigger and then not releasing it.
If you don’t hold the trigger down, fanning is the same as cocking.
So to claim that you fanned a gun but didn’t pull the trigger is a little like claiming that you read a book but didn’t turn the pages. It’s an inherent part of the process.
Anyway, if he gets away with this, attorneys everywhere should start presenting this as a defense for any client involved in a shooting: The gun just went off by itself! My client didn’t pull the trigger!
And it seems fitting that this defense be named after Baldwin, as in: My client’s husband was fatally shot while in bed with another woman, but I got my client off using the Baldwin defense.
