Let's Do It....Again

Choosing the manner of execution once again:

• Utah is set to execute a convicted killer by firing squad after a judge agreed Friday to the inmate's request, renewing a debate over what critics see as an antiquated, Old West-style of justice.
  
  Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, was given the choice of being killed by lethal injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles — a rarely used method of execution that harkens back to Utah's territorial history.
  
  "I would like the firing squad, please," Gardner told state court Judge Robin Reese after hearing his avenues for appeal appear to be exhausted.

The anti-death penalty crowd will scream about "cruel and unusual" punishment, but we've always thought that for the death penalty to be most effective, it shouldn't be conducted in a clinical setting where prisoners are "put to sleep." Hanging, firing squad, electric chair, gas chamber - executions need to be scary to be a deterrent.

For the bleeding heart crowd who whine about prisoners' rights, what do you think was going through the victims' minds as they breathed their last? And for those who might try to use the tired line of, "How would you like it if...", the fact is we (and you) wouldn't ever be in a position of actually having to face the hangman, the warden or any other executioner for offenses deemed eligible for the death penalty. And we shouldn't grant the peaceful death that we reserve for beloved pets on some of these sub-humans who inflict untold damage and pain on the rest of law abiding peoples.