From the beginning of movies to the 1970s, thousands of Westerns were made, with millions of shots fired

yeah but what u forgot to look at was that he really wanted to get that cool shot for his gay cowboy movie sooooooo he had no other choice but to kill that poor innocent mother. fuck those cops tho who kill the perps in hostage situations, they are racist and should be defunded!! cops aren't famous libturd hollywood actors, they are little people and arent allowed to pull the trigger on real guns!!!!!!

Yea. But, surely they dont buy guns off the street to make westerns. I'm sure movie guns, though real will never have had real bullets anywhere near them. But this armourer allegedly loaded it and was taking potshots.and left live rounds in it. Btw. Was that the only live round? Or was it loaded up?

probably is if u use crosswalk without looking

Check this out for insane amounts of gunplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ysVoV3x5Zo

Filmed in Mexico with hundreds of extras handling firearms at the same time, including a machine gun and explosions and NO real deaths or injuries whatsoever.

and all cobra fighter pilots successfully ejected

I heard some activist is already proposing "Alyna's Law" that will require movie companies to use only airsoft guns or deactivated firearms (barrel sealed up) and to have actors mime recoil and add the gunshots in post-production via CGI. A hundred years of safe movies using blank guns and Alec Baldwin fucks it all up in one shot.

It may well do, but to be honest I don't see what that would achieve. I'm sure the systems already in place for safe weapon handling on a movie set are excellent and 100% fit for purpose. The problem is that no system can function if it's not operating. And if people aren't doing it it's not operating. Exactly the same applies to anything new they might come up with; it means nothing if people don't do it.

The key word here is "accidentally".

From the beginning of movies to the 1970s

Well, the machine gun used is a belt-fed model, so it could fire a heck of a lot of shots before reloading. The editing was part of Sam Peckinpah's style. He would film guys shooting in normal speed, then slow down the film for the blood spatter, etc. etc. It was supposed to simulate the temporal distortion people actually feel when they are in a violent situation like combat.

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Interestign about all that Wild Bunch slaughter (both at the climax and in the opening):

All those bullets flying indeed but...the "hits" were wired blood packs on the victim's bodies(front and back, at Peckinpahs' request.) Perhaps not all that many guns were pointed at people -- one woman shot at Holden's back, but he was a major star, I'll bet THAT gun was checked.

Peckinpah had the backing of a Warner Brothers studio boss -- who LOVED the dailies on the movie -- to use all the money he wanted to buy more fake bullets, more "blood pack squibs" and hits for tables and walls to receive, more bloodied costumes, more extras and more TIME to film that final battle for as long as he wanted.

Meanwhile, you can bet that seasoned pros worked the guns on that movie. Peckinpah was famous for firing sub-par talent "on the spot'(or sub-par talent quit.)

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Calling the woman a bitch before shooting her, even though she had shot him in the back first, would definitely bring out hordes of protesters and cancelers if it was in a movie today.

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It was considered pretty rough in 1969. John Wayne never said that. Randolph Scott never said that. But The Wild Bunch somehow made heroes out of very, very mean and violent men. Borgnine uses a woman as a human shield in the final gunfight and another old woman is trampled earlier.

The message was supposedly tied to the Vietnam War (though Peckinpah said, no not really): the world was a savage place.

In the opening scene, LITTLE KIDS are seen torturing scorpions with ants and then setting them all ablaze. Savagery is even among children...