I'm of the opinionthat dropping the charges was the right thing to do in these circumstances, but after reading several articles on gun safety on movie sets, they could have easily made a pretty good case against Baldwin.
From The Hollywood Reporter:
From CNN:
From USA Today:
There are plenty of other articles out there about gun safety on film sets due to this incident, but they all stress the same basic rules that the people arguing that he should be charged are advocating for. And had Baldwin followed them this incident wouldn't have happened. He has made enough movies involving firearms in his career that he should have known what a proper set's gun safety rules should be. And furthermore, a single action army replica revolver doesn't require doing any sort of manipulations to determine if there is anything in the cylinder or not. Here's a picture of one of mine that is of the same make loaded.
And here it is unloaded.
You can easily see whether there is anything in the cylinder or not with just a quick glance. There is no manipulation required like there would be on a modern pistol. Given Baldwin's experience as an actor on movies where he handled firearms, he should have at least been knowledgeable about proper procedures to know that something was off based on how things should be handled on set. Ideally, he would have asked why there were "dummy" rounds in the gun that was handed to him and had the armorer remove them and shake them to confirm that they were in fact dummy rounds before continuing to practice his quick draw for the shot. Or he would have asked that they be removed for safety purposes. If he had followed the proper procedures that every armorer has said should be followed in the interviews from the articles I saw he would not have pointed the gun at the cinematographer, cocked the hammer, and pulled the trigger.
I think ultimately this case is an indictment of the industry as a whole and a very tragic lesson about cutting production costs and the tragedies it can lead to if proper procedures aren't followed. It has apparently led to a greater gun safety focus in Hollywood, which is a good thing, but it truly sucks that it was at the cost of a life lost.