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Comment by eindiran | Hacker News Reader

Death by firing squad is relatively humane (especially in comparison to electrocution), so if you really need to have capital punishment and your options are electrocution and firing squad, the choice is pretty clear.

I think the reason executions moved away from firing squad was that it was mentally taxing of the people in the firing squad, not because the alternatives were more humane.

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The good old binary. Let's just assume we _have_ to kill someone. We just have too. Now let's assume there are two ways to kill people. Nice. Gotta shoot em is the right answer.

Correct. The right answer is obviously a guillotine. The real humane way to solve this binary problem

Why stop there? America First supported Weimar Republic, which killing method landed on gas being most efficient for helpless civilians. Disrupts prison showers too.

Maybe it wasn't a solution though.

The guillotine is a humane system. Dr Guillotin designed it with quick and painless death as a goal.

Death camps gaz chamber were probably designed by doctors too. Not sure. But throughput seams to be the main drivers in those system. Being able to exterminate whole train of folks swiftly.

Different ball game if you ask me.

If it’s mentally taxing why not create some sort of automated firing squad? First version could just be a line of guns manually aimed and then set to fire simultaneously off some timer.

More advanced versions could eventually feature face recognition for auto aiming and arbitrary placement of the gun turrets.

There are countless other more humane ways to kill people, if we must. No need for a "high tech" solution here.

I'd prefer they keep it difficult/impossible to do though. Making capital punishment easier is the opposite of what they should be doing.

It might be instructive to look at how people choose to die when they have a free choice. Ah, what am I saying, why am I trying to think of better ways to execute people? We should just stop doing that.

Since it was an invention to make it easier on people who do the executions, yes we probably don't have to focus on optimizing our disconnect to killing.

Indeed. There's also the point of making it as cheap as possible, or profitable to rich people, like with soylent green.

The high tech aspect is what brings dignity and humanity to the execution. If you had to be killed, wouldn’t you rather be killed by our best and brightest technology, rather than some cheap off the shelf bolt gun?

Why stop there? We could just load them up on an assembly line and have one of those automotive robotic arms use an air gun on them like they do for cattle. Better yet just rip their heads clean off with an automated guillotine. Then us regular folk could check it out on the latest “how it’s made” episode and remark to our selves on how satisfying the sheer efficiency of it is. Do that long enough and we could even have kids react to the old people’s way of electrocuting them in a chair. They’ll think that shit be cray. Sounds to me like the killing business is ripe for disruption.

From the Onion: Ohio Replaces Lethal Injection With Humane New Head-Ripping-Off Machine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfsMMVgIToA

If it's ripping, is it really a guillotine?

Well, no. I seem to remember the history of the guillotine would preclude ripping as it was supposed to be cleaner than other chopping methods.

Can't we just use those execution bolt guns at that point? It seems silly to make a big distance and chance of missing. The products can be bought off the shelf from slaughter houses.

If a firing squad is somehow moving anything in the right direction then god help you.

What is the point of the death penalty if not vengeance?

And if it's vengeance, how can vengeance ever be humane?

To be clear, I am absolutely not defending capital punishment as a practice. My point is just that, if you have already decided that you are going to do it, like SC has, it is much better for it to be by firing squad than for it to be by electrocution, which was the proposed alternative.

I'm against death penalty but for the sake of discussion I don't think it's purpose is vengeance or torture but because society deems that some crimes are irredeemable and are a way of avoiding having to keep the criminal detained indefinitely.

Comparing costs:

https://www.thebalance.com/comparing-the-costs-of-death-pena...

I honestly didn't know this. I live in a country where death penalty sounds like a medieval thing. On the other hand I really don't understand how you take vengeance by killing someone. I understand it can be a deterrent for serious crime though.

Vengeance is mostly learned behaviour and ideology.

It really doesn't matter to the person being executed. I think changing it is more about the sensibilities of the observers.

I think it does matter to the person being executed. There are numerous stories of lethal injections going wrong, of those being executed writhing around in extreme pain.

If I were on death row I think I’d very strongly prefer a firing squad. If I were the person performing the execution… perhaps not.

But I think you’re right that these changes aren’t being brought about for the benefit for the executed. It’s embarrassing for those executing when one goes wrong and states have had to resort to more and more obscure cocktails of drugs as companies refuse to sell when they know their product is being used to kill. By comparison a firing squad has a very simple supply chain.

Plus there's a certain panache to a firing squad. By that I mean it's more dignified.

There's something really creepy about injections and electrocutions, it's like they're a perversion of medicine.

The firing squad forces society to face consequences for what it is doing. Capitol punishment is a way for society to say there's certain things we will not countenance, will not accept, will not try to explain except to reject it utterly. For especially gruesome crimes. But a firing squad deters its use whenever compassion is felt for the truly repentant.

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