This is actually a myth. I did a paper on it when we studied the French Revolution and read some pretty grisly studies on the matter.
It was quick and painless if the blade landed between two vertebrae, but that actually didn’t happen that often. It was common that it landed on a vertebra, which required hoisting the blade and dropping it again, possibly a third time.
It’s far from humane and probably not painless or quick most of the time.
The truth is, killing people humanely is actually really difficult. We aren’t that easy to kill and our nervous systems are exquisitely fast and sensitive. There’s a reason so many bizarre methods have been tried over the years.
I remember a movie about this American soldier who was sentenced to death after WWII. As I was a teen when I watched It, I couldn’t grasp all the meaning of the story, but I was shocked when I realized that, although the action and western movies had shown, bullets aren’t like tranquilizer darts. The soldier was hit several times but It didn’t kill Him instantly. In movies, the Heroes and Vilains kill with a single shot in, what seemed, a quick and painless way.
I mentioned it to dismiss the fast and hard to mess up claims. Can anyone here seriously tell me that they can’t imagine firing squads intentionally botching executions?
I don’t think genuine sanctions would allow such easy circumvention. But this may be the more relevant sentence in the Wikipedia article in this highly hypothetical scenario:
As of 2019 a large number of American companies produced Glock clones
NPR covered this at one point, though I can’t find the story now.
For many years, the US states were buying through third parties to disguise who was buying the drugs and for what purpose. The companies caught on and stopped selling them to these parties. Then for a while the US was relying on suppliers in Europe willing to sell the drugs to them illegally. Their connection for that got caught. They’ve been draining down stockpiles ever since and they’ve been out for a while now in most states. The states were also buying from each other for a bit since some states still had some drugs leftover but stopped executing people.
It’s all very dark, twisted, and stupid. Such desperation to murder people.
