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A legislative committee in Utah’s congress wants to bring back firing squads as a legal method of executing condemned inmates. Now, if this seems barbaric and archaic, keep in mind that we in the U.S. still execute about 40 prisoners a year, primarily by lethal injection, a process that has been significantly botched in the past year.
To be fair, Utah would prefer to kill people by lethal injection, but “The European company that makes this [drug cocktail] is refusing to sell to the United States because they’re opposed to the death penalty,” according to Rep. Paul Ray of Clearfield, Utah.
This leaves Utah with two options. The ridiculous, unthinkable method of not killing people, or the quite reasonable shooting them a whole bunch.
It’s good that this is a news story. It’s good so that we can realize that, as long as the death penalty is legal, we might as well let Utah just shoot people with rifles. Anyone who is outraged about this, but still thinks lethal injection or the gas chamber is a good idea, probably has some faulty logic along the way.
My call to states out there that are having problems with the drug cocktail is: let’s get creative! Oklahoma: why not hire some professional jousters to ride headlong into the condemned? Texas: It’s time to bring back the crossbow and hunt these people for sport.
It’s all the same, anyway — the state wants someone killed, and the crossbow/medieval lancers will get the job done.
Or we could, you know, just get rid of the death penalty.
