Here’s an interesting situation:
...gives a whole new meaning to the term “jury duty”, dunnit? Oh, wait: “only open to law enforcement officers”?
…and for the curious:
The state has purchased five Daniel Defense DD5-P rifles chambered in .308 Winchester, fitted with scopes, suppressors and bipods, at a cost of more than $24,000.
Bipods and scopes… at 10 yards? WTF? I mean:
Seems like an awfully-complicated and expensive way just to whack a convicted murdering scumbag, but that’s Gummint all over, right? I’m more of a traditionalist, in that I think the old “single bullet in the back of the neck” method would be just as effective, not to say much cheaper.
But no doubt someone’s going to have a problem with this.
Okay, all jokes aside: I happen to be a supporter of the death penalty and execution of the worst of scumbags, as any Reader of this website will know full well. The method of execution is irrelevant.
We’ve tried making it a kinder, gentler way of seeing off a scumbag by using the oh-so gentle lethal injection — following all sorts of issues with hanging, decapitation, electrocution and the gas chamber (itself an attempt to make killing someone less brutal).
Well, the injection thing has been cocked up so many times, and is so beset with difficulties in terms of lethal drug supply and so on, that Idaho has decided to go with what is surely the most effective method of execution: gunfire.
Let’s not get squeamish about all this. If you’re going to execute someone, it’s best to make it quick, simple and effective — something that the murderers probably didn’t afford their victims, by the way — and death by three .308 bullets to the heart is about as effective as any, short of another old way of using gunfire as punishment:
Effective, but loud and very messy (“Cleanup in lane 2!”).
Yeah, this is all very ghoulish and brutal and stuff, but just remember who’s on the chopping block here, being the worst of the worst: child murderers, people who killed someone for a few dollars at a 7-11, men who raped and tortured women before murdering them, etc. etc.
These people do not deserve to live, so fuck ’em. A .308 bullet to the heart is all they deserve.
So, not squeamish about the idea of the death penalty….but.
Mistakes can, and have been made. Not often. But still.
So I shifted my mostly lifelong approval of the death penalty to not approving it, unless the crime/incident is recorded and unchallenged by he accused.
Not saying the convicted (if absent video proof of the event) should get cake and ice cream .
Just that, in the rare instance the justice system fucks up, we can attempt to compensate for a wrongful conviction . Much harder to undue “death”.
All that said….Nitrogen.
Cheap motorcycle helmet wit a neck seal, and pump in nitrogen until they are dead.
No muss, no fuss, no pain.
Nothing exotic.
Just “gone”.
I’m – reluctantly – ok with actual mistakes. Any system run by humans will make some, and any system run by machines is only a system being run by humans at one or more removes.
What I want to prevent is wrongful convictions made because the case was full of outrage and some prosecutor or LEO decided he KNEW who was guilty, or wanted a notch in his belt, and built a case to get the verdict he desired. At the moment, when such meddling is uncovered, there are few if any consequences. Janet Reno took part in a case or cases involved in the Day Care Abuse hysteria, and made her National reputation from it. Almost all those convictions, it later was revealed, were based on wildly biased evidence that any professional should have known needed to be thrown out of court with great force. But unlike Mike Nifong, Reno got away with it and went on to be one of the worst Federal Attorneys General since Mitchell Palmer.
I do not disagree in any manner to be rude or just to disagree, but my point is simple, NO MATTER THE WEAPON USED OR HOW THE WEAPON IS EQUIPPED – THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME THAT SOCIETY IS BEING RID OF CRIMINAL SCUM USING TOOLS THAT COST LESS THAN LETHAL INJECTION OR OTHER METHODS.
BANG BANG BABY! And to paraphase “SHOOT BABY SHOOT”
YMMV
“I’m more of a traditionalist, in that I think the old “single bullet in the back of the neck” method would be just as effective, not to say much cheaper.”
I will say this though, a Ruger Single Six convertible using 22 MAG ammo to the back of the head would be cheap, and still FUCKING AWESOME!
BANG BANG BABY!
# EUTHENASIA FOR CRIMINALS
Being strapped helpless to a table and getting injected doesn’t seem that humane to me anyways.
Goring asked for the firing squad to die like a soldier with honor. The judges rightly refused.
They should have dropped the fat sonofabitch feet first into a wood chipper.
It’s been said that, until relatively recently*, something like 1% of the male population was culled on a continuing basis. That level of domestication was thought appropriate to maintain proper social function. That we quit doing that (20th century bloodbaths aside), could be the source of many of our civilizational discontents. That level of culling can’t be done with 10 year death row stays and lethal injunctions, only public gallows and firing parties. It also doesn’t help that we stopped suppressing female anti-social behavior, but it would be dangerous to mention that in public.
* mid to late 19th century
And another thing … As Kims’ favorite, Instapundit, has been known to point out, the police and criminal’s rights don’t exist to protect society so much as to protect criminals from the natural response of society to their criminality (1%, see above). In other words, we’d be running them down and hanging them from handy trees, if the cops wouldn’t stop us under the illusion that the “justice system” actually works.
That, of course, sheds interesting light on the “abolish the police” movement. It might not have quite the ultimate effect that its proponents imagine, unless they can disarm and emasculate the population even more than they already have.
Yeah, when I first saw this my thoughts were give me $500 and a trip to Home Depot, I can take care of that. A few 8×8 fenceposts, some bags of cement, and enough cinder blocks and mortar to build a backstop and we’re good. I already have a post hole digger. One million is way too much money.
As for the rifles, I’d assume anyone volunteering would just bring one from home. Either that or call up the CMP and request some loaners. M1 garands are getting a bit thin on the ground, but anything they have left should be good enough.
We’re all SO overthinking this. SpaceX launches dozens of rockets a year. Chain a few of these bastards down in the flame trenches and be done with them.
That solves the problem of where to put the remains afterwards, too.
Utah used to have firing squads aremed with Model 94’s in 30-30 if I recall correctly. No need to buy a bunch of fancy rifles, they already have their duty rifle…. They already volunteered… have them bring their duty rille. We’ve already spent enough on the scumbags as it is. If you let citizen volunteers in on the process (I almost said fun and games… inappropriate….) there’s the chance that the accused might ‘dodge a bullet’ if so, then they get to go free.
Quote from Wikipedia, regarding Gary Gilmore, who was executed by firing squad in Utah in January 1977:
Against his expressed wishes, Gilmore received several stays of execution through the efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The last of these occurred just hours before the rescheduled execution date of January 17. That stay was overturned at 7:30 a.m., and the execution was allowed to proceed as planned.[10] At a board of pardons hearing in November 1976, Gilmore said of the efforts by the ACLU and others to prevent his execution: “They always want to get in on the act. I don’t think they have ever really done anything effective in their lives. I would like them all—including that group of reverends and rabbis from Salt Lake City—to butt out. This is my life and this is my death. It’s been sanctioned by the courts that I die and I accept that.”
(end quote)
Daniel Defense is right down the road. Their decked out 308 for 5 grand? That sounds about right as their 5.56 AR dressed the same way is about $600 less. They are proud of their guns. A Palmetto State AR in 300 Blackout with a red dot sight is around $600. A Colt AR-15 is $1100. Do they not have accountants running the purchasing?
Since my tax $$$ are going to be wasted anyway they might as well be wasted on execution rifles.
Shoot straight, you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!” (Breaker Morant)
In my ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ books (specifically book 3, ‘Texas in the Med’) I have it set up that executions are done by firing squad, said squad being the members of the jury that handed down the conviction and sentence.