An important factor in today's widespread loathing for capital punishment is that somebody has to do the deed, and our modern societies lack untouchables who can be forced to undertake such heinous work. The firing squad dodges this problem with a cute little tradition: one of the rifles -- no one is supposed to know which -- is loaded with blank rounds, so all the shooters can choose to believe, privately, that they are not personally responsible for the death.

Me, I think that no servant of the state should be expected to do work that I would refuse to do myself on moral grounds. I know I can attain a fairly high standard of marksmanship with an ordinary military rifle, so I have actually thought this through. I can understand why so many jurisdictions in the United States have retained capital punishment, and why so many Canadians would support the return of the noose (we never went in for the fancy stuff). But I sincerely wonder just how many sentences could be carried out without great difficulty in locating capable executioners?

Utah firing squads are traditionally made up of prison officers, if I recall correctly. Like police and military personnel, modern correctional staff (not prison guards any more) are far more professionalized than their predecessors of even a generation ago, when Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in Utah. Could prison officers trained to be case managers and supervisors of rehabilitation programs bring themselves to shoot down a restrained prisoner, even one condemned to die?

I know plenty of soldiers who couldn't, and wouldn't, do it.