Yeah, so now we're arguing about something someone else said and what they meant by it. Oh well, what the heck.
Since he mentioned both industry gun safety rules and general gun safety rules, I think it's safe to say he differentiates between the two and the most reasonable interpretation of "general gun safety rules" is that it means the general gun safety rules.
I suppose. However it's pretty relevant to the gist of the discussion in its currently evolved state.
1. The general gun safety rules do not apply on set.
2. The industry gun safety rules are not set by the production company or its head.
3. Neither the general gun safety rules nor the industry gun safety rules are enforced by the production company or its head.
4. The actors are not responsible for gun safety on the set--they are given guns which have been made safe by the armorer for the activity that is required by the screen play and told what to do with them and what not to do with them. As long as they follow instructions, anything that goes wrong is the responsibility of the armorer, not the actor.
I realize that people (like me, for example) don't like Mr. Baldwin and apparently a lot of those people desperately want to somehow make this his fault regardless of what facts they have to ignore or twist to accomplish that goal. The problem is that no matter how you slice or dice it (assuming we stick with the facts), the armorer (or anyone who circumvented the armorer's authority) is responsible for this incident. The whole reason there are armorers on set is to keep incidents like this one from happening and when something goes wrong it's their fault.
NOW, if it turns out that the armorer was incompetent or careless (which looks like the situation at this point) and the production company knew it (or should have known it) but didn't replace them with competent personnel, then there is potentially responsibility by the production company and perhaps its head at that level.