News:

Welcome to our site!

Main Menu

Bring Back the Firing Squads

Started by SGOS, May 07, 2021, 01:28:19 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

SGOS

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/us/firing-squad-south-carolina.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

QuoteFrustrated by the lack of drugs available to carry out lethal injections in their state, South Carolina lawmakers are on the cusp of a controversial solution: forcing death row inmates to face the electric chair or firing squad when lethal injection is not possible.

A bill proposing that change, approved by the State House this week, appears almost certain to become law in the next few days, and is being lauded by Republicans, including Gov. Henry McMaster, who have been vexed by pharmaceutical companies’ refusal to sell states the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections. The lack of drugs, they say, is a key reason South Carolina has not executed anyone in 10 years.

Opponents are appalled by the bill, which would make South Carolina the fourth state â€" along with Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah â€" in which death by firing squad is an option for the condemned.

“Why would South Carolina move toward the firing squad when they also do that in North Korea?” State Representative Justin Bamberg, a Democrat, said in an interview on Thursday.
The Electric Chair turned out not to be the end all be all of execution technology.  I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did.  Not having experienced either, I don't think the firing squad would be any worse. 

Lethal injection sounds more humane but it can be too easily botched, which is why the drug companies won't sell South Carolina the stuff.  I don't know who came up with the injection technology.  The executioner pushes the first button, then the second, and then the third, a fourth???  Each injecting a different chemical. 

I don't want to compare apples and oranges, but when I put my dog down, the vet gave him one shot of barbiturate. I held my dogs head, and a second later he collapsed letting out one final breath of air, and he was dead.

But I guess for humans, it requires a lot of fal-der-rahl, walking the guy down the hall, reading the Bible to him, taking into a special room, lashing him down to the gurney, opening the curtains so everyone can watch, some guy with the correct time tells them when to start pushing the buttons dispensing the chemicals, which had been switched out of the correct order by some prison guard that had a personal grudge against the guilty.

They've got a doctor, the warden, a few guards, the button pusher, and a priest, everyone wanting a piece of the action.


Shiranu

Regression is the way of the future.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Hydra009

QuoteRepublicans, including Gov. Henry McMaster, who have been vexed by pharmaceutical companies’ refusal to sell states the drugs needed to carry out lethal injections.
Gee, I wonder why pharmaceutical companies would not want to be associated with death?  Hell of a brand image.  And in some cases, it's actual murder.  People sitting on death row for years and then getting exonerated by DNA evidence or some other reason.  What company would want to be associated with that?!

SGOS

Yeah, I thought about that.  Drug companies are more likely to react to social pressure than the needs of execution chambers, and I doubt that they sold enough of those drugs to make that much profit, anyway.  It's kind of a no brainer in the board room.

aitm

Yeah, the stupid of all this is...well...stupid. There are probably a half dozen “pills” that can be dissolved into a meal...un-noticeable...and they wake up dead. For fucks sake..this is easy. Fuck man...put me in charge....which is to say..I am not killing people unless you have 100% absolute proof...but then...sayonara.
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

SGOS

Didn't the government give some of its most important spies cyanide capsules to avoid capture, or did I get that out of a James Bond movie?

Shiranu

Quote from: SGOS on May 07, 2021, 09:14:32 PM
Didn't the government give some of its most important spies cyanide capsules to avoid capture, or did I get that out of a James Bond movie?

It's pretty unpleasant (though I suppose most death is), but it is an extremely effective; once it starts, it's pretty much unstoppable. I think it was more an efficiency thing than a humane thing.

Suffocation by inert gas or firing squad would be the way to go for me, if I had to choose; with the gas you feel euphoric and giddy until you pass out from oxygen loss (no C02 build up, so you don't get that panic like if you were suffocating) and firing squad just so that the person murdering me has to live with that on their conscious.

Could also come up with some final words to try and mind fuck with them as well.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

arch warmonger

Man you guys write as if you're basically certain you'll die by execution. Makes me wonder what you've done in the past.

Gawdzilla Sama

Quote from: arch warmonger on May 08, 2021, 06:21:25 AM
Man you guys write as if you're basically certain you'll die by execution. Makes me wonder what you've done in the past.
Forum rules won't let me post that information.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

Shiranu

Quote from: arch warmonger on May 08, 2021, 06:21:25 AM
Man you guys write as if you're basically certain you'll die by execution. Makes me wonder what you've done in the past.

On the contrary, I'm 99.99% sure I never will; it's called not being a dick and being concerned about others.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Feral Atheist

What is stopping the use of opioids for lethal drug executions?  It works, every community across the country has multiple overdose deaths every month.
In dog beers I've only had one.

Hydra009

Quote from: Feral Atheist on May 08, 2021, 05:51:35 PMWhat is stopping the use of opioids for lethal drug executions?  It works, every community across the country has multiple overdose deaths every month.
Something about the state using the very drugs they have outlawed to forcibly OD a person to death seems a little not right for some reason.

Mermaid

Quote from: Hydra009 on May 08, 2021, 07:06:06 PM
Something about the state using the very drugs they have outlawed to forcibly OD a person to death seems a little not right for some reason.
I think this is a pretty big clue that executing people is abjectly wrong in every way.
A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities â€" all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. -TR

Shiranu

The idea that the state should have the authority to take someone's life away is a little too despotic for my taste... even throwing people in prison for anything more than intentionally violent crimes, when you look at it objectively, is an extremely immoral practice by most people's definition of the word.
"A little science distances you from God, but a lot of science brings you nearer to Him." - Louis Pasteur

Mike Cl

4 states can now use firing squads.  They are the wonderful states of Utah, Mississippi, Oklahoma and now South Carolina.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?