Imo Alec Baldwin's claim that he never pointed the weapon at anyone and never pulled the trigger may not be as unreasonable as it seems at first glance.
From a
recent article:
"Baldwin sat on a wooden church pew, practicing a cross-draw of his weapon, before the director heard what sounded 'like a whip and then loud pop.'"
For a right-handed shooter, "cross-draw" implies that the weapon is on the left side of the body (either under the left armpit or on the left hip), handle forward, and the shooter reaches across his body with his right hand, grasps the handle, pulls it from the holster and then across his body towards the right as his right arm extends towards the target.
So the muzzle is crossing a fairly large frontal arc, probably the entire left-front quadrant and maybe more (depending on where the muzzle starts out and where the target is), which means that he would not have to be deliberately "aiming the gun" at anyone within that arc for them to be at risk in the event of an accidental discharge during the cross-draw. Depending on the specific design of the cross-draw holster, the muzzle could even start out pointed BEHIND the shooter, resulting in a potentially huge arc.
Proper trigger etiquette would call for the shooter's finger to remain outside of the trigger guard until the pistol is roughly aligned with the target, but that is difficult to do when executing a cross-draw because it's hard to get an adequate grip on the pistol without using your index finger, ESPECIALLY if you are trying to go fast.
So imagine that as you quickly grab the pistol you (easily) mistakenly wrap your index finger around the tigger, because you have to pull against resistance to get it out of the holster and the angle is awkward. The weapon is not going to fire because of this alone, because on a single-action revolver the hammer ALSO has to be pulled back. However things are about to go bad!
As you execute your rapid cross-draw, in order to be able to get the shot off as quickly as possible once you are on target, you probably start cocking the hammer while the weapon is traveling across your body towards alignment with the target. And the instant your thumb comes off the hammer, having cocked it, BECAUSE your index finger is ALREADY pressing the trigger (even though you never did so INTENTIONALLY),
pop! And if your thumb comes off the hammer before the weapon has completed its arc across your body and been aligned with the target, well that's the direcion the bullet goes when it exits the muzzle. If anything unexpectedly impeded the motion of Baldwin's right arm - like tight clothing, or the weapon getting hung up in the holster because he was going faster than his muscle memory could handle - then the timing of his thumb coming off the hammer would have been thrown off, and would have happened before the weapon was aligned with the intended target.
This is my best guess about "what happened", and in this scenario Alec Baldwin may have never INTENTIONALLY pressed the trigger, and he did NOT do so while the firearm was deliberately pointed at anyone, BUT rather did so while poorly executing a cross-draw. This armchair analysis does not address the pivotal issue of WHY there was a live round in the cylinder.
But imo in light of the "practicing a seated cross-draw" information, it is plausible that Alec Baldwin did not realize the trigger was already pressed when he thumbed back the hammer, and it is also plausible that he never intentionally pointed the weapon at anyone and then deliberately pulled the trigger - they were unfortunately within the arc of his failed cross-draw. And it probably all happened within a few tenths of a second, literally in a blur.
EDIT: More information has now come out, which indicates that Alec Baldwin was NOT practicing a cross-draw at the time of the shooting:
Alec Baldwin gave his first sit-down interview to talk about the "Rust" shooting that killed Halyna Hutchins. Here's what he said.
www.yahoo.com