Herzog set an example for me when I read about the behind the scenes on Rescue Dawn -- which is a movie that you should see if you haven't.
Herzog wouldn't ask the actors to do anything he wouldn't do himself; so, despite how grueling that film was to make, and how much the actors had to put themselves through, their director, despite being more than twice their age, would do what they were asked to do before they did it.
I try to do the same thing when I'm working. If I'm asking a model to stand in water in January, you bet your ass I'm doing the same thing.
So, the elephant in the room with Alec Baldwin, since he was a producer on Rust, is the question of whether or not he would have checked the gun himself, or demanded more of a safety process, if the scene had called for the gun to be pointed at his head, and the trigger would be pulled? Shouldn't that be a rule for everybody in a place of authority? How is it ethical to demand that anybody do something that's potentially dangerous that you wouldn't do yourself?
I'm reminded of an interview I saw with Laurence Olivier about his time shooting HENRY V in Ireland (which he directed in addition to acting in it). He asked one of the extras to climb a tree and then jump down on someone riding on horseback below. The extra said "won't you show us how it's done, Mr. Oliver?" (The Irish extras refused to call him Olivier.) So Olivier climbed the tree, jumped down, and broke his foot.