So, I guess I'm gonna make most people angry.
I'm opposed to the death penalty entirely. Even for the worst of us, I think that life in prison should be the harshest punishment.
However, so long as we're going to engage in this barbaric practice, we should do in as humane a way as possible. If I had to choose how to be executed, I'd pick the firing squad in a second.
It's been incredibly rare throughout history that people being executed by firing squad aren't killed on the spot. Yes, it happens. That's why I said "rare" instead of "never."
Most methods of execution have been about the comfort of the executor rather than the person being executed. Lethal injection is psychologically easier on the executioner; but, a lot of people are simply paralyzed, fully aware, and experiencing suffocating to death. They just don't look like they're in agony because they're paralyzed. Electrocution isn't as painless as it was thought to be when it was first adopted.
Some of the messier methods of execution that we see as more barbaric are actually more humane; but, we've rejected them because they look worse.
Again, I think that we should do away with murder by the state entirely. But, if we're going to live in a world where people like me are still in the minority and we're still gonna kill people and pretend that it's justice, the option of firing squad should be available to anyone that we're ready to kill.
