I’ve heard the biggest problem is how it hits the shooters. So I ask, do you think you could be on a firing squad?
Parameters:
Must prove you can hit a target at 100 feet.
6 shooters, 1 has a blank round.
You are required to do it even if you disagree on the persons guilt or not. Therefore all bullets have identification so if after shooting they see one shooter deliberately missed or missed by error, you get some penalty (ex. loss of pay or never again on this duty).
Remember you have to deal with yourself. Seeing that persons body jump and twitch from your bullet will live with you the rest of your life. Also you might not find out later that the person was found to be innocent.
#3 contravenes #2. If the bullets are marked, then they know who did shoot.
I could be an executioner IF I thought the sentence was just.
I have a wacky idea that a member of the jury should be the executioner. If they decide that they can’t do it at the last minute, then the sentence is commuted to life in prison without parole.
According to the brother of the last man executed by firing squad, quoted in this article, it’s 25 feet and four shooters.
No, I would not participate. I’m not overly keen on capital punishment, and I consider it morally wrong for me to take a person’s life except in specific circumstances. I would also be opposed to voting for the death penalty on a jury.
OTOH, I wonder what kind of people DO agree to participate in a firing squad. Are they just hard-nosed lawn-order types? Do they view executions by firing squad (or any other means) as a job that somebody needs to do? Do they take any pleasure in it? Are they depraved sadists who revel in riddling a tied-up hooded convict with bullets?
#2 and 3 pretty much cancel each other out. The entire reason why one shooter in a firing squad has a blank (and they don’t know who) is so that each shooter does not know if he was the one who killed the prisoner or not.
I always make the mistake of reading comments on news stories. People portray themselves as very bloodthirsty, and there is no shortage of volunteers to kill people.
Why is the answer any different from the kind of people they find to inject poison in other states? I have to believe that after the numerous fuck-ups that have resulted from the loss of the classic execution drug cocktails, that the people who find veins and mix up untested cocktails are more cold-hearted and screwed up than someone who pulls a trigger that will result in a near-instantaneous death.
It’s all mixed in with that weird Mormon blood atonement thing. Does that mean that when the Scientologists get their own state they get to audit people to death?
I can live with or without the death penalty — I could not kill an animal, but I’ve held a few paws as some were sent to sleep, which is horrible, and am certain I could execute [eg: murder, to speak plain ] people I thought had been sentenced for an awful crime.
But I would take no pleasure in it, nor treat the chap inhumanely: if needed I would share a cigarette with him beforehand and chat lightly on distracting matters. Yet after it would be difficult for this to disturb one’s rest. Regard that most are willing for millions of charming animals to be factory-farmed and/or slaughtered by others. Are those others supposed to be shaking with pity and remorse after ?
That is supposing someone trained me in shooting well. Chateaubriand wrote not only on the horrible kidnap and murder of D’Enghien by Bonaparte’s death squad; but on that of his own cousin, Armand, shot with two others on the Grenelle Plain. His face was destroyed and teeth scattered and a dog was eating his brain — yet it was as quick as death as could be achieved in those days.
I think that having a blank in one of the rifles is for the peace of mind of the shooters; it preserves for each the possibility that they didn’t kill someone. As for identifying the bullets, it sounds like that’s for the people who arrange the execution. They wouldn’t even need to reveal the results to the shooters. If someone missed the target, they might just tell him “we won’t be using you again.”
