The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is officially bringing back firing squads as an option for executing prisoners at the federal level. Here’s why I think that is the right decision.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the decision to strengthen federal guidelines on the death penalty on Friday. “The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” he argued. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”
JUST IN: The DOJ is bringing back firing squads for federal executions.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 24, 2026
The Justice Department says it’s expanding how executions can be carried out after ending the Biden-era pause, including the return of firing squads and lethal injections.
“The prior administration failed… pic.twitter.com/EiF72kfXRy
The basic argument starts with why capital punishment is justified to begin with. Rationales include the justice of executing someone who has willfully and viciously deprived another or multiple others of their lives; the injustice of using taxpayer dollars to fund murderers’ decades in prison; the powerful deterrence factor against more murder; and the Biblical sanction (e.g., Genesis 9:6, Exodus 21:14ff). But rather than going into detail on that argument, I am going to move forward on the base assumption that capital punishment is just and discuss the firing squad in particular.
I do think that, in a just society, executions should not be unnecessarily brutal and gory, but I also think we have gone overboard on trying to make even capital punishment as easy and painless as possible. A few years back, anti-capital punishment activists were screeching and wailing about the lethal injection of a murderer in my state (Arizona) who had killed a family — including a young child — in an unimaginably horrific manner. Talk about having your priorities out of whack. The death penalty is the most severe penalty possible, which is why it should be imposed with care, but when it comes to murderers, the whole point is that the crime is so horrific that it necessitates a life for a life. And in that case, I don’t think our main priority should be worrying about whether the murderer feels some slight discomfort while dying.
This leads into a bigger point, which is that in modern America, nearly half the country (especially leftists but also some conservatives) seems much more concerned about protecting and helping and rewarding the victimizers rather than the victims. The debate about capital punishment and the justice of firing squads in particular revolves around whether you think the criminal deserves special care and compassion or whether you think the victims deserve full justice. Who is the priority — the victim or the victimizer?
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In fact, not to impose the death penalty in the case of murder, and even, I argue, in some rape cases, is not only a lack of justice, but a lack of mercy for the victims. And to bring back my point of earlier, methods of execution like lethal injection are deliberately designed to be painless; i.e., to prioritize and accommodate the criminal. Firing squads put more emphasis on justice and less on coddling the most evil criminals.
Besides delivering justice on behalf of the victims, the death penalty protects citizens from becoming the next victims. A study that examined data from 1980 to 2011 found that “states with death penalties and at least one execution in a given year had 28% lower murder rates than other states.” Notice the power of having actual executions occur. This suggests another benefit of firing squads, since they are a much more powerful and graphic image of deterrence than gentler forms of capital punishment.
