That’s true. And that’s why I personally am opposed to the death penalty. No redress for grievances can be obtained for a wrongful conviction. I have no moral qualms about the death penalty, and if it could be reserved for the Charles Mansons and John Wayne Gacys of the world, that would be fantastic. But there appear to be all sorts of stumbling blocks to that, so best just not to have it at all.
But if you are going to have it, I really do think the guillotine is the way to go.
When I was an active target shooter, I bought a machine that cost around $250 that let me make my own bullets. This was in the early 1980’s so the price might have gone up quite a lot since then. You can Google “RCBS” to learn more.
I’m surprised the cost of bullets has really soared. I would think that anyone who owns one of these machines would make bullets and sell them for enough money to make it worth their while.
As I recall, you could buy the brass cartridge shells and lead bullets and primers separately. Then assemble these three components together with the proper equivalent to gunpowder (modern ammunition does not use gunpowder per se. It’s a new kind of powder that is smokeless and is based on TNT, I think). A modern bullet consists of those 4 components - brass shell, lead bullet, primer and powder.
The cost of making your own bullets was about half the cost of store bought bullets. I would have thought some people would make bullets at home and offer them for sale to people on Craigslist who might trust them to make quality bullets. They could try some of the bullets and if they were satisfied, they could still try a small sample of every batch they bought.
I cant understand the cost remaining so high unless the cost of the individual components have soared as much as the cost of the bullets themselves have.
Would anyone know?
My friend, you are thinking way too small. Why not an American Shooter competition? Everyone pays an entrance fee, but goes through a series of competitions, televised of course, with all appropriate ad revenues, to a final dozen.
No. Those unwilling to go through with it will just make better television.
Can’t do it - makes the whole competition for accurate shooters pointless.
No. Let me rephrase that. Hell no. If a person is so committed to capital punishment, s/he can pull that trigger.
That’s the kind of thinking we need.
I’m not opposed to capital punishment in principle, but an impartial and fairly reliable justice system is a prerequisite. U.S. doesn’t have that.
Given that some states do execute, I’m amazed it’s so difficult. Firing squad would be simple and humane; I assumed the argument against was that a person would be forced to kill directly, rather than push a button. (Yes, some would pay for the privilege to kill but that would be grotesque.)
Another very simple and humane way to kill would be morphine overdose. That bizarre and unreliable “drug cocktails” are used instead makes me wonder if there’s some hidden agenda at work.
I can see that. But such competition would discourage the majority of CP-supporting shooters. Competition means rules, and rules are against Freedom. A lottery would allow everyone to participate, without having to be a professional shooter or dedicated hobbyist. I like the idea of a competition, but I feel it would limit participation to the Elite, and that too many people would be dissatisfied.
Even without the televised competitions, there could be those ‘human interest’ videos like NBC loved to show during the Olympics instead of showing the Olympics. If someone is having second thoughts, we could see it unfold there. Maybe have an Alternate messing with one of the Chosen.
As I said, it need to be inclusive so that Homer Vengeance has a chance to kill a person. Also, there needs to be the veneer of civility. Thus there can be no chance of missing and maiming.
Only, they might have second thoughts after the fact. They might remember those ‘Vengeance is MINE sayeth the LORD’ and ‘Thou shalt not kill’ things. They need to have an ‘out’.
Thanks. Pay-per-view of the actual execution makes money. Businesses that show the PPV make money. Businesses that supply the businesses that show the PPV make money. Not to mention execution parties; small businesses making T-shirts and bumper stickers, and such; increase in sales of Remington or Winchester or whatever rifles to people who have to own The Gun, and so forth. The market potential is enormous!
I think there would be quality control issues with home loaded ammunition. New brass vs resized used brass also. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with progressive loaders, but a “shade tree” ammo business sounds kind of off.
I think the recent rise in the cost of ammunition is mostly supply and demand fueled by scare tactics by the NRA. I don’t think companies are making any less ammunition than they used to, it’s just that buyers are snapping it up off the shelves and hoarding it at home.
For one, securely placing an i.v. cannula can be quite difficult. Especially with drug addicts. If there’s extravasation, the barbiturate could be partly ineffective and the potassium which follows would cause quite a bit of pain. And if the curare which comes before the potassium is effective you couldn’t even scream (or breathe) …
I think lethal injection is more prone to error than a bullet in the head or even hanging.
Why limit it to competetive shooters? Let’s bring in the Battlebots boys to really boost those ratings.
My submission: Terriersaurus Rex, chases down the miscreant in a sawdust ampitheater, grabs him by the neck and shakes him dead. Twenty five feet tall and covered in fuzzy plush, its miniature makes a great stocking-stuffer.
If I were in charge, I’d say have a 100 kg weight held at ten meters on some oiled rails. Position the condemned’s head under the weight and release the catch. Fast, painless and utterly obliterates the person’s face. Which would probably feel cathartic for the pro-death penalty crowd. 
Okay, I can see that. So instead of a competition on talent, we can still have a popularity contest based on audience voting. Maybe on who deserves the honor the most? With, this is sheer genius on my part, no criteria for who is most deserving - it is completely up to the voter.
One vote per phone number; think of the drama of families with only a land line fighting over who gets to cast the vote.
Good, that’s good.
Twelve episodes, each focusing on a different contestant, and a different type of competition.
That’s why we have twelve - at least one should be able to score a hit. We give them shooting lessons. They don’t have to be sniper level; I don’t think the firing squad stands that far away. We watch them progress over the twelve episodes.
Tough.
Besides, follow-up shows during the off-season depicting the winners’ emotion and moral breakdowns will be necessary when the novelty wears off.
Only licensed products and public parties, though.
Will it be tacky to have a skimpily dressed long-legged woman tying on the blind-fold?
I think we should explode them. 
Put them in a pit wearing a 20 kilo semtex full body suit, including semtex helmet.
Very fast, no chance of survival or torment. Also no real need to ‘dispose’ of the body.
Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok would be proud.
Re: I am against the death penalty. However, if it has to be done, it should be done properly and humanly, causing the least amount of pain to the victim, not to be aesthetically pleasing to the audience, which is all that lethal injection is.
You’re from Pakistan, if I remember right? (I’ve been casually reading this board for a while before I joined last month). What do they use there? India uses hanging, though they use the death penalty quite rarely (Officially, at least- they also have hundreds of people die in police custody ever year).
Amateur! Someone commenting on the linked article suggested the condemned be killed by dripping acid on his head. (No, really: ‘How about strapping them into a chair with head strapped back, and set an ACID DRIP over their head??’) His stated intention was to cause suffering, since the murderer’s victim suffered.
Ha! Great minds think alike!
Or the guillotine.
Gotta figure that of the old-fashioned means of execution, it’s easily the most humane: the person whose body has been quickly severed from their head surely loses all awareness within seconds due to no blood reaching the brain, and is probably too much in shock during that brief interval before the final blackout to feel pain.
And presumably it’s not a particularly difficult engineering feat to construct a guillotine that never botches an execution.
The problem it has is the one that GreasyJack suggests: that certain means of execution are too disturbing for the witnesses. Decapitation is surely one of those.
My attitude is that if you can’t find solid citizens who aren’t overly disturbed by the reality of taking a life via state execution, then maybe we shouldn’t have executions.
The Guillotine is OK, I guess. A bit too French. They’re also too closely associated, at least in my mind, with a specific and unpleasant historical place and time.
Hanging still seems the best to me. It’s universal, death is instantaneous if done properly, and you get to die standing up (as is the firing squad, although that seems a bit too military for civilian executions). It’s really the classic way of doing things. Point in fact: the one time my country ever executed someone, they built a gibbet and hanged him.
Incidentally, I oppose the death penalty.
Honestly, the reason is because there are people who want capital punishment to be a punishment, and they perceive a morphine overdose as just letting the criminal get high one last time. I think this is a dumb argument, but that’s a part of why we use these complex drug cocktails; so that the person feels nothing, instead of a high.
Re: Hanging still seems the best to me. It’s universal, death is instantaneous if done properly, and you get to die standing up (as is the firing squad, although that seems a bit too military for civilian executions).
As you say, ‘if done properly’. If not done properly, the victim dies a slow and painful death from strangulation.
Re: They’re also too closely associated, at least in my mind, with a specific and unpleasant historical place and time.
There are lots of societies that have been more unpleasant than Revolutionary France, though, and a lot of them used hanging. I guess part of my discomfort with hanging is that I associate it with things like Southern lynchings, the British hanging thieves, etc…
The British in India used to execute rebels and mutineers by blowing them from the mouths of cannons, believe it or not.