📜 History Repeats: The Return of Firing Squads in Modern America

The story of a man on death row for 23 years, facing execution by a firing squad—an archaic method making a controversial comeback.

Mar 07, 2025

😽 Keepin’ It Simple Summary for Younger Readers
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🇺🇸 In America, when some people do very bad things, they can be punished by being put to death. This method has often used 💊 drugs, but now some places want to use 🔫 guns to kill instead because the drugs are hard to find. South Carolina will use a firing squad for a man named Brad, who has been waiting to be executed for a long time. Some people think this is old-fashioned and cruel 🏺, while others say it might be faster and less painful ⚡. There are lots of talks about whether this is right or wrong 🤔 and if there is a better way to handle it.

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🗝️ Takeaways

🔫 Execution by Firing Squad: Brad Sigmon is set to be executed in South Carolina, marking the first U.S. firing squad execution since 2010.
💰 Logistical and Financial Motives: Difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs has led states like South Carolina to reintroduce firing squads.
⚖️ Questioning Constitutionality: The Supreme Court has upheld the legality of firing squads, but debates on their humanity continue.
🇺🇸 Limited State Adoption: Only a few states currently allow the use of firing squads as a method of execution.
📜 A Bloody History: Firing squads have long been a method of punishment, carrying historical and cultural implications.
🔍 Ethical Concerns: The return of firing squads raises questions about justice, the human cost of execution, and the psychological impact on executioners.
🌍 Urgency for Change: Advocacy for criminal justice reform and abolition of the death penalty is essential as the United States remains an outlier among developed nations.

Blood, Bullets, and the State: The Return of Firing Squads in America's Death Penalty Arsenal

¿Hasta cuándo seguiremos permitiendo esta barbarie en nombre de la justicia?

In a country that prides itself on being "civilized," we're about to witness a spectacle straight out of the 19th century. This Friday, March 7th, 2025, at 6 PM, Brad Sigmon—a 67-year-old man who has spent the last 23 years on death row—will be strapped to a chair, have a target placed over his heart, and be executed by firing squad in South Carolina.

Yes, you read that correctly. A firing squad. In 2025. In the United States of America.

Madre mía, sometimes I wonder if we're moving forward or backward in this country.

The Execution Machine Rumbles Back to Life

Let's start with the basics. Brad Sigmon was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend's parents with a baseball bat in 2001. According to his confession, he killed them because he was angry at being evicted from a trailer they owned and because his ex-girlfriend refused to come back to him. He also attempted to kill his ex-girlfriend but failed.

For this crime, he received the death penalty and has been waiting on death row for 23 years. Now, unless Governor Henry McMaster grants clemency (spoiler alert: no South Carolina governor has done so since 1976) or the Supreme Court steps in at the last minute, Sigmon will face three volunteer riflemen who will simultaneously fire bullets designed to shatter on impact with his chest.

This will be the first execution by firing squad in the United States since 2010, when Ronnie Gardner was executed in Utah, and only the fourth since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Why a Firing Squad? The Cruel Calculations of Death

You might be wondering why, in 2025, we're reverting to a method of execution that feels more at home in a historical drama than in contemporary America. The answer, like most things in our profit-driven society, comes down to logistics and money.

South Carolina, like many states that still cling to the death penalty, has had difficulty obtaining the drugs for lethal injection. Pharmaceutical companies, even those that have no moral qualms about profiting from human suffering in other contexts, have increasingly refused to sell their products for use in executions. Some states have responded by shrouding their execution protocols in secrecy, hiding the identities of their suppliers and even the drugs they use.

But South Carolina took a different approach. Faced with a 13-year gap in executions because they couldn't get lethal injection drugs, and because judges wouldn't set execution dates when the electric chair was the only option, the state decided to bring back the firing squad as an alternative.

Qué conveniente para ellos. Can't get drugs to kill people humanely? Just shoot them instead!

In a macabre twist of fate, Sigmon himself chose the firing squad over the other options available to him. He didn't want the electric chair, which he feared would "cook him alive," and he was concerned about lethal injection—particularly as South Carolina keeps the details of its lethal injection protocol secret. He feared that an injection of pentobarbital would send a rush of fluid into his lungs and effectively drown him.

So, he chose bullets. Three of them, fired simultaneously by trained volunteers standing 15 feet away—the same distance as a free-throw line on a basketball court. The bullets will be .308-caliber Winchester ammunition, designed to shatter on impact with his chest bones and destroy his heart.

The Bloody History of Firing Squads

The firing squad has a long and violent history, both in the United States and around the world. Historically, it has been used to punish mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America's Old West, and as a tool of terror and political repression in places like the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

In the United States, firing squads have primarily been associated with military executions and with the state of Utah, where the method has historical ties to the concept of "blood atonement" in early Mormon theology. The idea was that some sins were so severe that the sinner's blood needed to be spilled onto the ground as a form of atonement.

Siempre es la religión, ¿no? Whether it's the Inquisition or the modern death penalty, religion has a way of making killing seem righteous.

Utah has conducted three firing squad executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976:

Gary Gilmore in 1977 (the first person executed after the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty)
John Albert Taylor in 1996
Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010

Interestingly, all three men chose the firing squad over other available methods.

Are Firing Squads Constitutional? What Does the Supreme Court Say?

The Supreme Court has never ruled that firing squads are unconstitutional. In fact, in the 1879 case Wilkerson v. Utah, the Court explicitly upheld the constitutionality of execution by firing squad, stating that it did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

More recently, in a 2017 dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that "in addition to being near instant, death by shooting may also be comparatively painless." Some death penalty proponents have started to see the firing squad as potentially more humane than other methods. If the shooters' aim is true, death is nearly instant, whereas lethal injections require getting an IV into a vein, electrocution appears to burn and disfigure, and inmates have been seen to writhe and struggle when nitrogen gas is used to suffocate them.

But let's be real here—there's something profoundly disingenuous about debating which method of state-sponsored killing is most "humane." It's like arguing over whether it's better to be stabbed or shot. The end result is the same: a human being's life is deliberately terminated by the state.

Es una locura completa that we're having these conversations in 2025.

Which States Allow Firing Squads?

Currently, only a handful of states authorize firing squads as a method of execution:

South Carolina - Added the firing squad as an option in 2021
Utah - Has historically used firing squads and still maintains it as an option
Mississippi - Added firing squad as an alternative method in 2022
Oklahoma - Has the firing squad as a fourth option if other methods are unavailable
Idaho - Added firing squad as an option in 2023

It's worth noting that more states may consider adding firing squads as an option as they continue to face difficulties obtaining lethal injection drugs. In fact, the number of states allowing this method has increased in recent years precisely because of these challenges.

The Last Firing Squad Execution in the US

The last person executed by firing squad in the United States was Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah on June 18, 2010. Gardner was convicted of murdering an attorney during a courthouse escape attempt in 1985. Like Sigmon, Gardner chose the firing squad over lethal injection.

Gardner's brother, Randy, has spoken out about his brother's execution, saying it was "gruesome and barbaric." He carries autopsy photos in an envelope and has warned that Sigmon's execution will be "so much worse" due to the ammunition South Carolina plans to use.

The Trump Era and the Acceleration of State Violence

It's impossible to discuss the return of firing squads without acknowledging the political context. During Trump's first term, we saw a dramatic ramping up of federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. In just the last six months of his term, Trump's administration executed 13 people—more than three times as many as the federal government had executed in the previous six decades combined.

Now, in his second term, we're seeing states emboldened to push the boundaries of what constitutes "acceptable" methods of execution. The rhetoric of "law and order" and "tough on crime" continues to drown out evidence-based approaches to criminal justice reform.

No es coincidencia that the states most eager to expand their execution methods are also those with histories of racial disparities in their criminal justice systems. The death penalty has always disproportionately impacted Black and Brown communities, and the firing squad's return is just another manifestation of a system designed to exert control over marginalized populations.

As an Indigenous Chicano witnessing this from the perspective of communities that have long been targeted by state violence, I can't help but see the connections between historical forms of oppression and their modern manifestations. From the genocide of Indigenous peoples to the mass incarceration of Black and Brown bodies, and now to the literal gunning down of prisoners by the state—it's all part of the same continuum of violence.

The Human Cost Beyond the Headlines

Let's take a moment to consider what will happen on Friday. At 6 PM, Brad Sigmon will be led into a small room. He will be strapped into a chair. A target will be placed over his heart. He may utter his last words before a hood is placed over his head. Then, three people—who have voluntarily signed up to kill another human being—will simultaneously pull their triggers.

Whatever you think of Sigmon's crimes, whatever you believe about justice and punishment, I ask you to sit with the reality of what our government is doing in our names. Three people will purposefully aim rifles at a hooded, restrained human being and pull the trigger with the explicit intention of ending that person's life.

¿Es esto justicia o es venganza disfrazada de justicia?

And what about those volunteers? What psychological impact does participating in a state-sanctioned killing have on them? Studies of executioners have shown significant rates of PTSD, alcoholism, and suicide. The firing squad doesn't just claim one victim—it damages everyone involved in the process.

Beyond the Execution: A System in Need of Transformation

South Carolina's return to the firing squad is a symptom of a larger disease: America's addiction to punishment over rehabilitation, revenge over restoration, and death over dignity. The United States remains an outlier among developed nations in its retention of the death penalty, standing alongside countries like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea—not exactly the company we should aspire to keep when it comes to human rights.

The facts are clear:

The death penalty does not deter crime.
It costs more to execute someone than to keep them in prison for life.
The system is riddled with racial and economic disparities.
Innocent people have been and will continue to be executed.

Yet we persist with this barbaric practice, now returning to methods that even our own great-grandparents might have considered archaic.

A Note of Hope and a Call to Action

Despite the grim reality we're facing this Friday, I still believe in our capacity for change. In recent years, we've seen several states abolish the death penalty, including Virginia in 2021—the first Southern state to do so. Public opinion continues to shift, with support for the death penalty at near-historic lows.

The fight for a more just system is ongoing, and there are concrete ways you can get involved:

Contact your state representatives and let them know you oppose the death penalty and especially the use of firing squads.
Support organizations working to end the death penalty, such as the Equal Justice Initiative, the Death Penalty Information Center, or your state's anti-death penalty coalition.
Educate yourself and others about the realities of the death penalty, including its racial and class biases, its ineffectiveness as a deterrent, and its astronomical costs.
Amplify the voices of those most affected by the system, including the families of murder victims who oppose the death penalty and exonerees who spent years on death row for crimes they didn't commit.
Vote for candidates who support criminal justice reform and oppose the death penalty.

La lucha continúa. The struggle continues. But I truly believe that one day, we will look back on this period of our history with the same horror and disbelief with which we now view public hangings and witch trials.

Until that day comes, we must bear witness, speak truth, and work tirelessly for a world where justice means healing, not killing; where we address the root causes of violence instead of responding with more violence; and where the state doesn't have the power to strap human beings to chairs and shoot them through the heart.

What do you think? Is there any method of execution that could be considered "humane," or is the very concept an oxymoron? And how do we balance the undeniable pain of victims' families with the growing evidence that the death penalty doesn't serve justice or public safety?

Leave your thoughts in the comments below. Your voice matters in this conversation.