I love this being framed as inhumane as if lethal injection isn’t the most consistently botched method of execution and as if firing squad isn’t by far the most effective and painless. People are shocked by it, and they want to abstract away from the barbarism inherent in the taking of a human life, but no matter the method, the end result is always the same.
Capital punishment shouldn’t exist in my opinion, not because I have any moral issues with it in principle, but because the burden of proof is simply too high to be met by the legal system as it exists now. Given that it does exist, however, I would personally choose firing squad as my way to go ten times out of ten. Better that than the paralytic working, the anesthetic not working, and feeling lava in your veins for the final minutes of your life as you can’t even scream.
Is firing squad better than hanging?
My understanding was a well planned hanging is relatively quick and efficient.
Also, ever since I learned that firing squads mix in blanks so the people feel less guilty I feel weird about it.
Trigger warning: this is about to get fairly gruesome; I’ll be going in depth on botched hangings.
But short answer: 100%. Hanging can be botched in a variety of ways. More detailed explanation below.
Tap for spoiler
The ways that it can go wrong tend to be fairly unpleasant as well. The ideal is that you get the perfect height relative to your weight that it breaks your neck, but if that gets messed up, you’re likely going to end up slowly suffocating instead (too short a drop) or having your head literally pulled straight from your body (too long a drop). There are (potentially apocryphal) accounts of people being hanged who weren’t actually heavy enough for it to effectively suffocate them or break the neck, so others would have to get involved and literally grab them by the legs to pull them down to add more weight. If the noose isn’t tight enough, it could come loose and wrap partially around the face instead, leading to a slow strangulation and/or severe lacerations. Skin can be fully or partially degloved as a consequence as well.
All in all, if we’re going for classic execution methods, I’m personally going guillotine.
I appreciate the detailed if morbid answer and agree with your conclusion
Here’s an idea: how about we stop killing people for no good reason?
Just stop executing people.
How else are you supposed to get rid of undesirables? /s
Just block hexbear and .ml!
So here is some info about hangings vs guillotine.
The only thing I can say about injections are that it’s botched all the time.
Firing squad seems stupid. Ricochet bullets are a possibility . And it promotes violence and aggression in law enforcement individuals.
So. Some medical info
Death by guillotine is actually incredibly ethical and humane.
In fact, in modern animal research, rats that are used in research and then killed are done so via a guillotine.
A friend was a pharmacologist researcher and told me that they gave them a little ketamine so they were out of it then cut their heads off. It’s quick. They die within a few seconds.
Contrary to popular belief. Breaking the neck or even cutting it through does not result in instant death. Only paralysis. Though severed head is faster death. (Fastest death is obliteration of brain stem).
Many of the nerves that control the face actually run down into the neck and enter the spine there. So cutting off the head, at the base of the skull, also paralyzes the face.
It’s sort of how people think that since fish can’t scream they don’t feel pain.
Just cause the severed head can’t scream and the face cant move, Don’t mean it’s dead. I suspect that’s why so many think breaking someone’s neck or cutting off their head is “instant” death. It’s definitely “certain death” but it’s not instant.
It takes a little bit of time for oxygen to be deprived from the brain enough to cause unconscious and then death.
Breaking the neck or severing the head isn’t immediate death. Someone with a broken neck (even if it causes face nerves to be severed) may stay alive/conscience up to a minute or two. Just paralyzed. Knowing they can’t breathe. Knowing death is coming.
Terrifying.
So the gallows it is for the traitors.
I think we can agree only some of them deserve the guillotine. Only a few. Hanging honestly seems appropriate for most criminals who have done a crime worthy of execution.
Personally, I do not support the death penalty because mistakes are made in the judicial system. And the death penalty can absolutely be abused to get rid of people who are innocent or have information that those in power dont want out.
Additionally, my lust for justice thinks death is not justice. A life time of having ones freedoms stripped away seems more appropriate for criminals.
Did you post this before you had finished?
Edit…never mind , op has edited and finished the post.
Yes. I accidentally submitted before finishing and then I got distracted while editing. Sorry for the confusion
He’s just got slow internet, he’s still typing
Whenever I read about the inavailability of lethal injection drugs it reassures me that my anxiety over dying from general anesthesia must by way overblown.
I’m generally against execution due to the chance it could be applied to an innocent person, but if it’s going to be a thing, why the fuck can’t it be asphyxiation by nitrogen? The most painless and peaceful way to sleep yourself to death is RIGHT THERE. The body doesn’t even consciously know that it’s dying. The person just blacks out and that’s it.
Source: Project Hail Mary
Edit: okay, so I actually clicked and read the first paragraph of the article and nitrogen hypoxia is the additional method. Yay! I guess…
Edit2:
“And for nitrogen hypoxia, we would be asking the executioners to administer a method to humans that we do not even use to euthanize animals anymore due to the distress it causes them to process.
“The exposure to euthanize a pig would need to be longer than seven minutes. How long would they have to safely wait and watch for the gas exposure to definitively kill a human?” LaCoursier asked.
I feel like biomedical monitoring of the heart and brain waves could definitively determine when brain death has set in. Perhaps maybe providing counseling to the executioner helping them understand that nitrogen gas hypoxia, even if it takes longer, is the gentlest way to go, could maybe help with the trauma of being an executioner?
Didn’t they try that once and the condemned was trying not to breath as long as he could, convulsing, fighting for his life till the last moment? From what I read it wasn’t peaceful at all.
Yeah, another commenter brought that up. I was naively unaware. Sucks…I really thought it was the calmest way to die. It was comforting to know there might be a quiet and non-messy way out in case of an agonizing advanced terminal illness or something like that in my future.
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