As has been discussed elsewhere on the topic, the firing squad reloads.*
On the command of “Fire”, Slovik was hit by eleven bullets, at least four of them being fatal. The wounds ranged from high in the neck region out to the left shoulder, over the left chest, and under the heart. One bullet was in the left upper arm. An Army physician quickly determined Slovik had not been immediately killed. As the firing squad’s rifles were being reloaded to fire another volley, Slovik died.
(Emphasis added.)
*Technically, I guess it’s more accurate to say that the weapons are reloaded by someone else and given to the firing squad, since they’d want to preserve the fiction of uncertainty as to who has the non-lethal round.
In her case, there was no doctor involved at all as far as I know. The people trying to execute her had no medical training. But reportedly, with her vein condition it would be difficult to do it properly even for a real doctor.
You probably don’t. With lethal injection, there’s a level of faux civility around the whole procedure, as if it is a standard visit to a doctor’s office, to appeal to our civilian sensibilities. A military execution by firing squad is inherently more brutal than an execution by lethal injection, so I doubt they’re going to get squeamish about additional rounds.
Yeah, I also think it’s improbable, but human error always can be a factor, even where you don’t expect it. Especially in such stressful circumstances for everyone involved.
There is an American expression, “He can’t hit the broad side of a barn.” That’s the level of poor marksmanship that would be necessary for an execution to go wrong like that.
How many of the shooters are happy to be doing this today? Some might rather be elsewhere.
Looking at that poor dude in a wheelchair 15 or 20 feet away it might be easy to persuade yourself to point in the general direction, close your eyes, and squeeze the trigger.
At those ranges, anyone who’s actually trying to hit center of mass or whatever designated aimpoint will succeed within an inch.
If the weapons are sighted in for 25 meters (AI tells me that’s the off-the-shelf standard), they’re going to hit high if they don’t compensate. If they do compensate, whether they hit the target is really dependent on the skill of the shooter. Granted, anything firing a 5.56mm round shoots pretty flat, but I’d bet the firing squad won’t get a lot of range time to prepare for such a short shot.
In a bizarre sidenote to this whole barbaric, sickening mess, the only livestreaming platforms that have said that streaming a public execution violates their TOS are… Kick and TikTok.
I mean, what? Kick are the ones taking the moral high ground over YouTube and Twitch? The world truly has gone mad.
That’s not surprising at all - Twitch allows people to Livestream footage of terrorist attacks while celebrating their actions with no penalty, showing an execution would be small potatoes by comparison.
Just wanted to single this out because this comparison really hit home for me. I’d never thought about it like that, but you’re right. Hegseth is very much a Percy Wetmore type character. Just a cruel, vicious, tiny little guy. The list of people I despise more than Donald Trump is very short, but Hegseth’s just earned his way on it.
I’ve seen two interviews so far with people who had been shot by him; one plans to attend and the other does not, but they both found the idea of televising it despicable. Even putting it on Tor would be disgusting.