ridiculous sophistries

Am I the only person to be wholly underwhelmed by the agitation taking place in a couple of US states over the mechanics of the death penalty? As long as you are going to kill a man, unless of course you have them crucified or impaled or broken on the wheel or whipped to death, what difference does it make if it takes two or twenty minutes to kill him? This seems to me rank sentimentality. There is no such thing as a painless death, and if you want a quick and sure one, the Chinese way - one bullet to the back of the head - can hardly be beaten. Either way, this strange business of deciding that you are entitled to send a man to death, only to then worry about the degree of pain the poor fellow will suffer, seems to me the most incoherently sentimental of all pieces of nonsense. I am against the death penalty, of course, except for treason in wartime or for tyrants like Hitler. But I am not too concerned with the specifics.