I thought they had a person but it was some nepotism hire that had no actual qualifications.
Well, to be fair, hereditary assumption of a movie set task is pretty common. Their armorer comes from a VERY distinguished line of the same. It's not like you can go to CalBerkely and major in "movie props n'shit".
The production was low budget. The staff was overtasked. There are reports of on set weapons being used off set for target practice. There are rumors of malicious intent to sabotage the shoot (poor choice of words) by seeding the prop ammo with live rounds when the production moved away from union labor for cost/safety reasons.
Not sure if any of that panned out but it's shocking if true. Still doesn't absolve Baldwin of pointing a live gun at a woman, cocking it, and pulling the trigger no matter WHAT he thought was gonna happen.
But it mostly pushes his responsibility to the manager side rather than acting side IMHO. He might have THOUGHT he was aiming off center of mass, maybe it was a ricochet, hard to say from here. His failure was letting that round get into the gun, I bet he could convince a jury it wasn't his duty to inspect the gun himself or adhere to strict firearm safety rules in the course of filming.
Would a lead actor get fired for doing it if the gun when "click" instead? Doubt it. I wonder how many stuntmen get shit canned for that stuff though.