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Mississippi House passes bill to legalize execution by firing squad

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If this has to be done, just sit a guy down in a chair and have a robot/mechanism fire a handgun into the back of the inmate's skull. That way it's quick and there's not 5 dudes who are scarred for life.

According to the rest of this thread, the reason there are multiple people is *because* they're less likely to be scarred. They wouldn't know who killed the victim, exactly. Plus the headshot method might not be instant AND means disfigurement.
 

TheMan

Member
Asphyxiation with an inert gas like nitrogen would be best. Basically go to sleep and never wake up.
The only mess would be the poop.
 

plidex

Member
Firing squad seems tame compared to other methods honestly.

Also these never fully went away, firing squad has been around in quite a few states up till now as either a backup or a choice (in Utah), so I'm not sure what's shocking about this in particular.

I think it's that many people believes these things are supposed to keep going away, not coming back.

If this has to be done, just sit a guy down in a chair and have a robot/mechanism fire a handgun into the back of the inmate's skull. That way it's quick and there's not 5 dudes who are scarred for life.

I thought about that but you still need someone to press the button, and it would be worse for that person than for the 5 dudes.
 

Woorloog

Banned
Why not just build a machine for that?

Who activates the machine? There's your executioner.

Theoretically, a machine could be rigged to be triggered by a random event (radioactive decay, a lightning bolt detection, a shooting star, whatever) but such thing would be highly complex, and depending on chance, it might take long-ish time to activate.
 

Aselith

Member
Who activates the machine? There's your executioner.

Theoretically, a machine could be rigged to be triggered by a random event (radioactive decay, a lightning bolt detection, a shooting star, whatever) but such thing would be highly complex, and depending on chance, it might take long-ish time to activate.

You could rig it on a timer to trigger once a week and just schedule executions around the timer
 
Some crimes are so heinous that you don't deserve to breathe any more. I see no problem in trying to choose the most humane, neat or painless way to get it done.

No one thinks about the psychology of the members of the actual firing squad.

It will become several peoples job to kill a man by gunfire. Do you realize how much that fucks up a person? Now imagine how much it would fuck up 12 people at the same time?

Forget the criminal, think about the guy on the other end of the rifle for a minute.
 

bloodydrake

Cool Smoke Luke
I think if you have to do it, and your gonna try and take as much of the terror out of it as possible.
Get the perp high as a kite via some gas,strap em to the table, give em some some mellow tunes, then hit em with an automated stun gun that renders them unconscious then guillotine.
Its horrible but I can't imagine a better way to be executed...tho perhaps just gassing them in their sleep so they never wake up could be more humane? I don't know.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
My guess would be the following:
- A case whose central question is "Is the death penalty unconstitutional?" would get 3 votes in the affirmative (Breyer, RBG, and probably Sotomayor)
- I bet Kagan would vote in favour of any reasonable restriction on the death penalty, but not to abolish it.
- I bet Kennedy would vote against the gas chamber or electric chair but definitely not about any restriction that makes the death penalty functionally impossible, as we saw in Glossip v. Gross.
- I bet Roberts could per persuaded to favour some limits on the death penalty
- I expect Alito would essentially not favour any limits on the death penalty
- I am confident Thomas would have no problem with using a medieval torture device to execute a 14 year old and mentally disabled criminal.

I think there is an emerging consensus among experts that lethal injection is over because it's too hard to get right without the cooperation of medical companies who have all decided to opt out. There is not an emerging consensus to get rid of the death penalty. So how do you square those two things? Bring back some other form.

It's a pity that this is now a fully partisan issue. Every state that executes someone is a Republican state and every state that doesn't is a Democratic state. If you sort Obama's 2008 victory margin list and sort states into "No executions", "Sorta some executions but not really", and "Killing people regularly", they basically look like Democratic states, swing states, and Republican states. No one should be executed or not depending on who won the last state election. That's pretty ugly.
 

Wereroku

Member
Yeah figured this would start happening when companies stopped selling the US the correct lethal injection drugs. The cobbled together mess that is being used in various states are leading to torturous ends for some people.
 
I'd take a firing squad before a lethal injection or an electric chair any day.

And they give one guy a blank but they don't say who so no-one has to feel bad.

Also, is hanging that bad? I always thought that was OK so long as you got the 'drop' right?
 
Let's give a state with a racist justice system where african-Americans make up 60% of the prison population despite being only 35% of the state population more ways to kill black people. Sounds about right.
 

Fury451

Banned
No one thinks about the psychology of the members of the actual firing squad.

It will become several peoples job to kill a man by gunfire. Do you realize how much that fucks up a person? Now imagine how much it would fuck up 12 people at the same time?

Forget the criminal, think about the guy on the other end of the rifle for a minute.

This is why nobody knows who fires the bullet.

Not defending it, but there's a protocol here.
 

Woorloog

Banned
But at that point the person is so abstracted from the execution that it might as well be man that invented electricity that allowed machines to exist.

Not really. If you set motion a series of events whose effects and timing you know, are you responsible for those events? (Random person activating it without knowing what it does? Is ignorance an excuse? Ponder that. For example, being ignorant of law doesn't absolve one.)
The inventor of electricity didn't know what would be done with it. Inventors of guns aren't responsible for their use, but their users are.

I just realized this does sorta rule out random event machines though. If you activate it, you know it will kill someone at some point, so you're still responsible even if you don't know the timing.

This is why nobody knows who fires the bullet.

Not defending it, but there's a protocol here.

Blank and real bullet have different recoil. The shooter knows if they did it or not.
 
Why was this something that was even brought up as bill? Of all the problems Mississippi has, a congressman really thought "you know, our death penalty isn't cruel enough, let's bring back death by firing squad!"
 
If we are to the point that the death penalty is ok then firing squad is perfectly fine. Killing someone quickly to me it doesn't matter what the means are. That being said I'm not in favor of the death penalty.
 

Hackworth

Member
If this has to be done, just sit a guy down in a chair and have a robot/mechanism fire a handgun into the back of the inmate's skull. That way it's quick and there's not 5 dudes who are scarred for life.
Maybe if five dudes get scarred for life every time they kill people the state will run out of executioners.

Actually these are Mississippi cops killing mainly black people, they're not going to give a fuck.
 

Huff

Banned
Well since yal and the media freaked about the the "botched" lethal injections from lack of pharmacology knowledge

this is what you get
 
But at that point the person is so abstracted from the execution that it might as well be man that invented electricity that allowed machines to exist.

Or the person who started that timer knows they're the ones who started the ball rolling on every death that comes after....

Plus this is silly and not how it works anyway.
 

Woorloog

Banned
If we are to the point that the death penalty is ok then firing squad is perfectly fine. Killing someone quickly to me it doesn't matter what the means are. That being said I'm not in favor of the death penalty.

So, why not save some money have the criminal be hacked to pieces with swords?
 
images
 

Aselith

Member
Not really. If you set motion a series of events whose effects and timing you know, are you responsible for those events? (Random person activating it without knowing what it does? Is ignorance an excuse? Ponder that. For example, being ignorant of law doesn't absolve one.)
The inventor of electricity didn't know what would be done with it. Inventors of guns aren't responsible for their use, but their users are.

So, since we're going down the crazy rabbit hole, you could tie the machines start to a random lightswitch in the jail and then pay someone to go test all the lights. Technically they are doing a different job and don't have to know what was triggered and make the machine so that it doesn't shut off unless an emergency cut off is triggered once it starts
 
Why was this something that was even brought up as bill? Of all the problems Mississippi has, a congressman really thought "you know, our death penalty isn't cruel enough, let's bring back death by firing squad!"

Because these states are reliant on keeping their people ignorant and poor, so they turn bullshit like this into hot button issues to distract from the fact that they are ignorant and poor.
 

Woorloog

Banned
I said "quickly". If someone dies in a couple seconds from a gun shot it's much more humane than stabbing them to death. And again I'm not in favor of any of this.
Ooops, missed that. Still, substitute some other quick but very messy method of execution. I'd expect the means to matter much then.
(For the record, i absolutely oppose death penalty.)
So, since we're going down the crazy rabbit hole, you could tie the machines start to a random lightswitch in the jail and then pay someone to go test all the lights. Technically they are doing a different job and don't have to know what was triggered and make the machine so that it doesn't shut off unless an emergency cut off is triggered once it starts

Well, that'd work as a true random generation hardware, so you might as well use that radioactive decay i suggested above. Then i'd point a finger at the guy who connected the machine to the electric outlet, or the person who brings the prisoner to the execution chamber.
 

Razorback

Member
What about a heroin overdose? That sounds like how I'd like to go.

Or maybe just don't execute people? Just a thought,
 

Woorloog

Banned
What about a heroin overdose? That sounds like how I'd like to go.

Or maybe just don't execute people? Just a thought,
I'd imagine overdoses are actually pretty unpleasant, even with drugs. I mean, the difference between drug, medicine and poison is the dosage...
 
Why not public executions while we are at it? They were pretty popular in past times, seeing as we seem to be plunging back into times of pain they could as well make money from the tickets, as a sort of one of those indirect taxes Republicans like so much.
Here go some ideas: mauled by hungry dogs, burnt alive, flaying and dismembering... They could even hang the charred disfigured bodies somewhere to make an example of it.

The fact that a democracy is even talking about death penalty in 2017 seems outlandish.

Also, if they care about humanity, why not just make them breath nitrogen? Cheap and painless.
 
Even before Trump death penalty always reminds me how US is third world country by some aspects. Even GAF have people that are for death penalty.
 
Blank and real bullet have different recoil. The shooter knows if they did it or not.

You could rig the guns up to a machine and have all the people push a button which triggers the shots. This would also remove the accuracy issues and keep potential cases of PTSD from shooting someone to a minimum. Would help keep things as humane as possible.

Then again, all this emphasis on being humane when it comes to the barbaric act of execution is weird. A certain subset of people want executions, but those same people don't want the person to suffer.
 

Shinypogs

Member
What happened to the doctors who used to/ still do administer the lethal injections? How is there not concern for whatever mental scarring they suffer or is that why companies and people started pulling put of doing this?

I'm Canadian so no death penalty here and I'd fight like hell to stop it from ever returning if someone tried. Wiki is telling me those who were known executioners in Canada did not tend to lead happy lives in the end.
 

Kaiterra

Banned
Frankly id prefer this to electrocution or injection if i was the one goong out

I agree. If we're going to have the death penalty, we need to stop pretending we can do it humanely and own up to what it really is.

That said, we shouldn't have it for a wide variety of reasons.
 
If you're already committed to executing people, why do we need to do it in the most humane way possible? We should be going for maximum carnage as a deterrent.

I want the old school man with sword vs lion or bear type battles. Or like 5 guys against each other with various weapons like spears and maces. Or maybe one guy against executioner on chariot.

Maybe people who would otherwise be violent could use these events as a way to quench their bloodlust and keep them from comitting violence on their own, because they should show up to a stadium and witness it in a controlled environment. And the events could raise a lot of money in ticket sales that could be donated towards drug rehabilitation or mental health.
 
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