The anguish of unintentional killing — and how Alec Baldwin can learn to cope with it

EVEN as he is surrounded by loving friends and family, actor Alec Baldwin may well feel all alone in the world. In a split second, he learned how capricious life can be, and how we have far less control over ourselves and our world than we like to believe.

By his own account, Baldwin is traumatised, in the grip of shock, grief and guilt after firing a prop gun last Thursday on the New Mexico set of the film Rust, killing the film’s cinematographer and injuring the director. The actor had been assured the gun did not contain live ammunition, law enforcement officials said.