The Death Penalty

In the latest blow to the death penalty, the Nebraska Supreme Court has decided that the electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment and should not be used. Naturally death penalty opponents are celebrating while a lot of conservatives are defending old sparky.
Where do I stand? I have to agree with the courts and death penalty opponents here, the electric chair is barbaric. It’s cruel, unusual, painful and just plain uncivilized. No civilized country should use the filthy thing period.
Now as for the death penalty, well I think society has an obligation to execute the worst transgressors of its laws but those executions should be carried out in a sane and civilized manner. Executions should be swift and dignified and treat the people being executed as human beings for that’s what they are. None of the supposedly humane methods we use in this country today like lethal injection do that. The American Medical Association rightly opposes lethal injection because it perverts the medical profession.
Therefore in my mind there should only be one method of execution in the United States of America: the firing squad. The cowardly criminal having tortured, murdered and raped the innocent should be forced to stand before six of his fellow citizens like a man and take his medicine like a man. A rifle bullet is cheap, relatively painless and simple to administer. No fancy gizmos are needed here, just six Springfields from the state armory.
It also leaves the executed with some dignity. The firing squad would also eliminate a lot of the sympathy those on death row endear since most of those executed are cowards the spectacle of the big bold serial killer being dragged out to face the rifles should destroy whatever legend they have.
No special class of executioner is created by the firing squad any six individuals can serve on it. There is no melodramatic walk to the death house and no longer vigil, somebody pulls the trigger and that’s it.
If we were truly civilized we’d execute people by the firing squad but we don’t. Instead we use cowardly methods that the worst gangsters would never resort to: needles and gas chambers. Like the rest of our prison system, it’s cruel, sadistic and wasteful.
I would make an exception to the firing squad, every convict on death row would be given a bottle of cyanide pills, a rope, a couple of razor blades and a pistol with one bullet. That way if the criminal wanted to do society a favor and end his pathetic life before facing the firing squad he could . That would save society money and allow the wretch to put himself out of his own misery. It would also keep the deranged from making heroes out of those on death row, a coward who blows his brains out attracts no followers.
That’s all I have to say on the matter, if we Americans don’t want to give criminals a civilized death we aren’t much of a people. If we can’t perform executions in a dignified manner then we shouldn’t have them at all.