I totally disagree with this. It's not an actor's job to do health and safety checks. They employ others specifically to do this sort of thing. You wouldn't expect him to assist with checking the microphones were working or that the lighting was correct, and this is no different. There are a multitude of jobs that need doing on a production, but an actor isn't expected to do anything but act.
Difference being that a microphone not working or the lighting being wrong isn't going to kill someone. Guns are dangerous, and checking to make sure that they're safe is quick and trivial. There's literally no reason and no excuse for it not being standard procedure to instruct actors to do so when handing them fully functional firearms.
As I said above, if it's standard not to do so, then I can agree that Alec Baldwin isn't guilty of much other than trusting someone else, but it's still a massive failure of the prodction/the industry.
Not if you're not familiar with firearms.
Some of the shit I've seen inexperienced people do at gun ranges over the years would make your blood run cold.
Well yes, people at firing ranges can be massive idiots. We're talking professional actors on decent sized productions here, though. They have all sorts of rules and procedures with regards to how to do things safely, including how to safely use the guns they're handed, so I don't see why it'd be an issue to instruct an actor on how to make sure that they gun they're using is safe.
Anyway, after reading around a bit, it might all be moot anyway. The most believable theory I've read thus far is that the projectile from a dummy round (used for closeups shots of revolvers because you can see the bullets through the front of the cylinder) got stuck in the cylinder, and that it wasn't noticed by whomever took them out and loaded it with blanks. When fired, the loose projectile combined with the blank essentially created a functional round (pretty much like what happened with Brandon Lee). It's either that, or the barrel was obstructed by something (which, again, could have been a projectile from a dummy round). Either of these should have been caught, but it's not something you'd expect an actor to check for.
e: and now I'm reading that there's rumor that the armourer had taken the gun off-set and used it to shoot live ammo, and that it wasn't the armourer that handed Baldwin the gun, but someone who had no business handing anyone guns. The armourer wasn't a member of the union, either, which from what I'm reading is a bad sign, and enough reason for crew to walk off set. Which they apparently did, over gun safety concerns (there had apparently been several cases of supposedly 'cold guns' firing), and were replaced by scabs. Seems the whole thing was a massive shitshow.