Idaho Governor Brad Little (R) recently signed legislation making the firing squad the state’s primary method of execution. Other states should follow suit.
If we believe some crimes deserve death, then we should have the honesty to carry it out in a way that shows death for what it is. Idaho’s decision restores that kind of moral clarity to the process.
Execution by firing squad forces society to confront the reality of deserved death without dressing it up as something softer. It is swift, direct, solemn, and makes plain the gravity of what is being done. That is exactly what capital punishment should communicate.
The case for capital punishment itself is not complicated. Crime disturbs the moral order, and only a proportionate penalty can restore it. Punishment, by its nature, must involve a deprivation that reflects the loss caused by the crime.
Some crimes so thoroughly shatter justice that severe punishments are required. To deliberately murder the innocent is to commit the greatest injury one person can inflict upon another, for life is the good upon which all other goods depend. The only fitting answer is the deliberate taking of the murderer’s own life — not out of bloodlust but out of justice. Punishment at this level is also a way of saying that the victim’s life had weight and that the murderer is fully accountable for destroying it.
If capital punishment is justified, then the means by which it is carried out should reflect its moral meaning. The firing squad is uniquely suited to this task. The condemned is placed before the community (represented by officers of the law), and cut off from it in a single, decisive moment. It is the public recognition that his place among us has been lost and his life forfeited.
This is why the firing squad is a fitting instrument of justice. It carries out what retribution demands in a manner that is neither theatrical nor evasive. Unlike, say, lethal injection, execution by firing squad presents the taking of life as a deliberate act of lawful authority. It is clear what is happening, who is responsible, and why it is being done. The condemned is executed not under the guise of medical care or some other profession, but under the authority of the state acting as the agent of justice.
The firing squad also highlights the communal nature of justice. The execution is not carried out in secret by a lone official but in the presence of several officers of the state acting together under command. The presence of officers rather than a medical professional also underscores that execution is not a clinical procedure but an act of justice carried out by lawful authority. This makes clear that the punishment is not a matter of private vengeance but the deliberate judgment of the community through its laws.
In the Christian tradition, governments are given the authority to “bear the sword” and to serve as “agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer,” as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans. Execution by firing squad is a direct expression of this authority, as the state is quite literally bearing a modern-day sword on behalf of justice. Thus, the faithful need not see the firing squad as a denial of human dignity, but as an expression of justice rightly administered.
The idea of facing a firing squad may well strike fear into would-be offenders, but it is important to note that deterrence is not the point of punishment. Deterrence treats the offender as a warning to others, and rehabilitation treats him as a patient to be cured. Both approaches miss the essence of justice. The murderer deserves punishment because of what he has done, not because of what might happen in the future.
To view punishment as centered around deterrence or rehabilitation is to reduce justice to a tool of social management. Punishment is about retribution, and the firing squad embodies that truth by carrying out the sentence in a way that is clear, decisive, and morally serious.
Returning to the firing squad is thus a recovery of the logic that underwrites punishment itself. We live in a culture that recoils from plain speech, that prefers euphemism to truth and sentimentality to hard judgment. Punishment has been softened into therapy, justice into management, and moral responsibility into vague talk about “systemic injustice.”
A society that still believes in justice should not flinch from the firing squad, for it is the clearest way of saying that murder will be answered with the full weight of law.
Tim Hsiao is a college professor and law enforcement officer. He is a Research Fellow at the University of Wyoming Firearms Research Center.
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