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I wasn't aware there was such a thing as a peaceful execution.
Nowhere does God in the New Testament give man the authority to kill another man.
Why is it always this bullshit? God giving people the authority to kill one another, or not. Not everyone is Christian and laws shouldn't be dictated by religion.
Just fucking say it's wrong. Make that argument because once you bring religion into it, you've already lost. God says whatever the people following him want him to say. Every time.
Because religious people don't think they are inherently good. And the fact that they need something like this to do the bare minimum required to be human, is quite telling.
They've grown up in a culture which literally says we are all wicked and only god can fix it. It not only excuses their own failings, but tells them to accept wickedness in others as a lapse in faith, not a moral failing. And that absence of faith is embracing wickedness. See: fucking everything.
The damage this causes will never be undone.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall God giving lots of authority to kill other people—even babies. It’s just you’re not supposed to kill your fellow Jews.
"Thou shalt not kill. Murder... but when you think about it religion has never really had a problem with murder."
Yeah, these religious nuts want to complain about murder, maybe they should look to cleaning up their own house first.
Even if we take Christianity into account, narrowing on just New Testament is also a losing argument because everyone within it cherry picks both.
It's important people read the articles on this one as it's doing the rounds. It was his choice, but also it's important to know why it was his choice. I think that part is a much more alarming thing to know and understand.
Yeah, the context is fucked. The state government wanted to resume executions really bad, but the drugs they use apparently are excruciating, so they force them to choose between those drugs, the chair, or the squad. So yeah he chose the squad… because… well, what actually is the best choice for the guy in that context? I don’t know, but I feel like it’s very possibly isn’t the drugs.
A bullet through the brain is pretty fucken quick. It may not be peaceful but it was probably relatively painless.
Read the article. The firing squad does not go for a headshot.
That's fucking stupid.
I mean, a lot of this is fucking stupid. That’s just one small part of the stupidity.
I wish I could pin this.
shieeeet if i was on death row, and i had a choice, i;d take the firing squad over lethal injection any day.
in case y'all didn't know lethal injection is a cocktail of 3 different drugs that were never approved by any doctor, the whole "do no harm" bit. typically its a sedative, a paralytic, and a potassium shot to seal the deal. there have been cases where people are alive and but paralyzed for way too long while the potassium is slowly and agonizingly killing then
If I had to choose I'd prefer my head to be crushed by a rapidly falling 100 ton block of steel. Shooting in the heart is fucking crazy. Your brain will survive for quite a while as it loses blood flow/oxygen.
There are states that have been experimenting with nitrogen, which just puts you painlessly to sleep. The pain from suffocation is caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide, not from lack of oxygen.
If I had the option, this is hands down what I would choose.
They've (probably purposefully) botched the nitrogen executions so instead of quick and painless it's slow and horrible
Getting shot by multiple people in the chest and stomach isn't going to be any more painless.
No one is arguing it's perfect or "painless", but in light of high-profile botched executions where the convict is unintentionally(?) tortured for hours before they died it seems to be the better option.
Multiple people targeting your brain and heart... It will be worse to watch and you might cause psychological damage to anyone watching or taking part... but at least you won't suffer for long.
EDIT:
and stomach
As I mentioned in another comment, they aim for the heart, from 15 feet (4.5 meters) away. And there's usually at least 3 shooters, so even if multiple people are abysmally bad marksmen, no one's dying slowly from a gut shot...
They don't aim at the head. They aim at the heart. And not every rifle has a live round so no one knows who fired the killing shot. At least that's how it was traditionally done.
You're right, I've since read the article and they aimed for the heart. Death was pronounced within 3 minutes of the shots. But I don't think this particular execution used the "random bullet and 2 blanks" method, or at least that's not a detail mentioned in the article:
"He chose the firing squad knowing that three bullets would shatter his bones and destroy his heart," said King. "But that was the only choice he had, after the state's three executions by lethal injection inflicted prolonged and potentially torturous deaths on men he loved like brothers."
still id rather get shot, and die of shock and blood-loss in under a minute then be paralyzed and in agony for a half hour. Lethal injection may look more humane, but appearances are deceiving, with a firing squad what you see is what you get, multiple rifle rounds turning your organs into slush.
Edit: 3 hours of them trying to administer the lethal injection https://www.the-sun.com/news/6015918/joe-nathan-james-jr-longest-lethal-injection/
Death by potassium overdose causes runaway cell death. When a cell dies and ruptures it releases potassium which then ruptures and kills other cells.
Essentially, melting your flesh off your body from the inside.
I'll take getting shot, thanks.
It will at least be quicker!
I think the death penalty should be brutal and violent. If anything, it should be even more violent. Lethal injections are disgusting; the state dresses its murders up in the visage of medicine. They make a murder seem clean and clinical.
I think we should do the exact opposite. Make it as brutal as possible. You want the government to kill someone? Fine. We'll make it a gorefest.
Here's how we should do executions. First, it's not carried out by state employees. It's carried out by the victim's closest relatives. As for method of execution? They're going to do it with their bare hands. The condemned is strapped to a chair and injected with a cocktail of powerful pain killers. The victim's family members are let in. They then have to beat the condemned to death with their bear hands, all while he is screaming and begging for his life. THAT is how executions should be performed. Quit trying to disguise state murder. You want the government to murder someone? Quit the pretense and make it honest. Maybe fewer people would support the death penalty if it consisted of brutally beating people to death instead of a faux-medical treatment.
Use state funds to rebuild the Angel of Death trap from SAW. Have the prisoner's closest living relative rig them into it, and have their best friend pull the trigger. If they have any children, they are brought in to clean up the mess. If they have any pets, they're rigged up to their own miniature version of the trap set to go off 1 minute before the prisoner's own trap.
*bare hands
Unless you're saying the state gives the victims cool animal grafts
Yeah this approach has definitely worked in Saudi Arabia, where public beheadings draw a crowd and people sell mementos of the occasion. Their people are famously anti-death penalty now - they even stopped sentencing children to death in 2020 by royal decree, very progressive. Though they haaave been increasing executions significantly over the last five years, even though up to two thirds of their executions are for non-violent crime. Hmm.
Public opinon polls are very rare in SA so let's check in on some opinions from SA redditors..
🤔
Man, I’m not convinced that this would change much. Nearly twenty years ago, I’d listened to something about the death penalty, in which the sister of a murder victim was interviewed; she was told that there was incontrovertible evidence that the person on death row for her sister’s murder was in fact the wrong guy. She replied, “I don’t care, someone has to pay for my sister’s death.” Because we have the death penalty in place explicitly for the purpose of exacting revenge rather than serving justice, there will always be someone who relishes the opportunity to carry out the execution, just out of blind rage.
"convicted of beating his ex-girlfriend's parents, David and Gladys Larke, to death with a baseball bat in 2001"
Seems like a pretty typical murder, what elevated it to a death penalty case?
He also got a 30 year sentence for burglary, which seems like an out of control maximum sentence for burglary. Dude was also 67 (was ~44 at the time of his crime), and had been behind bars for 23 yrs, why waste the time/money unless the fantasy of killing (or the power trip) is the goal.
And not an excuse, but the guy grew up watching his mother get beatings from an alcoholic father, and surprisingly had mental health and substance abuse issues. He apparently was drunk and doing coke before going to the girls house with a bat to confront her, and got there and found the parents she was living with and attacked them both going back and forth between rooms.
I think they should all be firing squad or hanging. Make them violent again. So people take notice of them.
People are downvoting you, seemingly not getting that you're saying the deaths should be visceral not for the sake of spectacle, but so that people see and must confront how violent it really is and are thus hopefully repulsed by the practice... but you are also correct from the standpoint of minimizing the pain experienced by the person condemned to death.
This guy was dead 3 minutes after being shot.
A proper hanging that breaks the neck and does not kill you via strangulation kills you in under a minute, and its a far more simple procedure to calculate a proper drop height for a person than it is to administer lethal injection or electric shock in a way that actually minimizes suffering.
A guillotine is another very rapid and relatively painless way to die.
... Lethal injections are often poorly administered by unqualified idiots, and the cocktails they use often don't render you unconscious... meaning you can be strapped in, physically paralyzed from one part of the cocktail, in excruciating pain for hours, but unable to express the pain.
The electric chair is also a horrifically painful way to die, it still to this day often requires multiple shocks to fully kill someone, over a long duration of time.
If I can pick my execution method, I'm going with the Gallagher method. You know those giant hydraulic hammers they use for driving big foundation poles into the ground? Just stick my head under one of those. It's messy as hell, but it's almost certainly the least painful way to go. You literally cannot feel pain it happens so quickly.
Im going to do the three stooges method and ask to be hung from a tree that is currently a sapling. Seriously though they only allow a selection from a few options.
Honestly, I agree.
Complete, near instant obliteration of the brain.
Not even a gunshot to the brain is guaranteed to completely kill you instantly...
... That or something like a depressurization accident, where you get sucked through a centimeter diameter hole in a tenth of a second.
In practice, the whole point is to draw it out, to maximize fear and suffering, it’s not a bug. I’m surprised they actually allowed the firing squad to go forward.