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Hey Platforms: Your Violent Content Policies Are About To Meet The Pentagon’s Firing Squad (www.techdirt.com)
submitted 6 days ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 15 points 5 days ago (12 children)

I've seen it argued that it might actually cause less pain and therefore be more humane than lethal injection even if it looks less clean, though not being an expert in how people die or how quick it is when someone is shot, I can't verify that. Personally though, I agree, I just dont feel like death can be a good thing and if you can execute someone, you sorta definitionally have them captured and under your control anyway, making justifications like preventing future violence irrelevant.

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  • [–] 10 points 5 days ago (11 children)

    That doesn't take into consideration the damage it does to you as an individual when you have to be part of a firing squad. Part of the reason they fell out of fashion was because of the psychological effects on the people carrying them out.

    That's not even to mention the fact that they can be botched (just like lethal injection), and I don't believe that being shot several times is humane in any way.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    I assume that psychological issue would apply to any sort of executioner regardless of the method, there's not really a way around that if you're killing someone, there has to be a person, or likely several, that actually does the deed, or at least is the last human to be involved in it. I don't think its humane either, I just meant that in the relative sense where anything can be said to be if the other thing being compared can find a way to be just a bit worse.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    Historically that's also why we moved away from execution methods like hangings.

    We kind of distilled down a way to remove people from the equation as much as possible to both I guess spread responsibility (making a large group of people have a hand in the execution to the point where no one person is singularly responsible), but also we seem to have gone out of our way to automate a lot of what goes into an execution to sterilize it of guilt as much as possible. This is at least part of why I don't believe in it.

    I feel that execution is vengeance based. It's not about making the person pay for their crimes (because very often prison is a worse experience than death).

    Justice is about repaying a debt to society and being rehabilitated. If rehabilitation is off the table then the next best thing is to incarcerate a person so they can't be a threat to themselves or others.

    The US is terrible at both somehow and I don't like or believe in our justice system but for a bar that was already in the basement we sure did find an elevator headed down didn't we.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago

    Lately I've come to have doubts about the ethicality even of prison, though I don't yet know what I'd suggest instead. In general Ive come around to the idea that the very notion that causing suffering creates a "debt" that must be repaid with more suffering on the part of the perpetrator is itself toxic, because if some way can be found to cause a person to live a life that will not inflict more harm without hurting that person, then that method would be better, at least in a utilitarianist sense, than something more "fair" relying on punishment. The challenge of course is in finding that way is.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 days ago (4 children)

    I think the tradition is to have one blank bullet in one of the rifles so people can kid themselves into believing they didn't kill someone.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    In my experience, firing a blank doesn't feel like firing a live bullet.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago* (2 children)

    I imagine there's no kickback? Maybe it's an urban legend, or it helps at least pull the trigger, hoping you've got the blank.

    Edit: Looks legit. https://www.standard.net/police-fire/courts/2017/apr/10/how-utahs-execution-by-firing-squad-works/

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  • [–] 4 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    When you fire a weapon with a blank there's less kickback (to the point where you'd notice the difference in recoil based on what you braced for vs what you got). At least, on all the weapons I trained on. Could depend on the weapon I guess though.

    I didn't mean to say it wasn't a thing, just that given what I have experienced I feel like you'd know if you'd shot a blank or not. It might psychologically make pulling the trigger easier but I don't think it changes the end result.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago (1 child)

    That doesn't take into consideration the damage it does to you as an individual when you have to be part of a firing squad. Part of the reason they fell out of fashion was because of the psychological effects on the people carrying them out.

    One could argue that's why it's better. Executioners shouldn't get a clean conscience by lying to themselves.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago

    To your second point, with the way things have been handled these last few years, it would not surprise me in the least if those events were to transpire.

    The newscasters will have to break the deep, mournful silence following the second shot. I hope the shooters prepare for the eventuality.

    Otherwise, those horrid, panicked moments will stretch on for eternity. "What do we do?" Will be carved into their expressions, it will guide their jerky, indecisive movements. The senior enlisted leader of the execution squad will have to make a decision. And what's another pull of a trigger for an old veteran?

    It won't have been done to avenge the victims, or in honor to his fallen brothers in Fallujah, Helmand, or Aden. It will have been done because he was presented with a problem, and had the tools, the abilities, and the wisdom under pressure to carry it out.

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