We need a return to the firing squad or to public hangings. Or maybe beheading. Lethal injection is a copout. Killing is violent. I despise that we always try to sanitize it. It's a dishonest attempt to make the forcible taking of another life clean, neat and non-violent. If we want to make it painless, how about anesthesia, followed by hanging the inmate upside down and cutting his carotid artery. He would die in seconds and feel nothing. Oh, but the blood! We can't handle the blood! We love to pretend that by injecting toxic chemicals into a person so that they can't speak, move, or writhe in pain is a non-violent extinguishing of life, rather than a state-sponsored murder (which is what it actually is). I think that there's an argument to be made in favor of the death penalty, but I can't abide the way in which we employ it. There's no such thing as a humane death penalty. I think we would use it a lot more appropriately if we had to face the reality of what it means to kill someone.
Similar to how the Bush administration forbid the photographing of caskets of dead US soldiers. Anything that makes the horrors of state sponsored death more visceral and real is on the table for censorship. When the truth works against your desires, hide it from view.It's a dishonest attempt to make the forcible taking of another life clean, neat and non-violent.
For this reason, I sometimes wonder if guns make it easier (psychologically) to kill another person than with something like an axe or a club. Sure, it's a soldier's job to engage with an enemy, but if people understood the sheer brutality of willfully ending the lives of other people at its most basic and visceral level, then I really wonder if people would be so at ease with allowing military action to take place. I also think that if people had more direct exposure to slaughtering animals for food, or even had to do it themselves sometimes, they might have a greater understanding of the value of human life, not to mention what good meat should look, smell, taste and feel like. None of this factory farmed, corn-fed shit. Of course, even slaughtering something small, like a chicken, is kind of a pain in the ass.
I kill a lot of rats for work (I'm not an exterminator; I'm a scientist!). "A lot" is, of course, a relative term, but suffice it to say that I've killed hundreds of rats with my own hands. Every time I have to feel the flesh being cut, and the bone breaking. It doesn't make me want to vomit anymore, but it took quite a long time to get used to. I think civilized people should have an aversion to killing. I also think that doing it at a distance (such as sticking a needle in an arm then pressing a button; or, as in your example, buying meat off a grocery store shelf) completely removes the gut-wrenching side of killing, which is really where it's humanity lay. It's east to pretend that the delicious ribeye on your plate has nothing whatever to do with a bolt to the brain of a once living steer. I'm guilty of that all the time. We are certainly willfully unconscious of it as a society. The way we kill prisoners is emblematic of a huge problem.
I know the feeling. One of my jobs at a restaurant included emptying the mouse/rat traps. I don't know why the boss wanted to use humane traps, since we were in an area where we couldn't really let them go. Lucky me! I think what bothers me about how prisoners are executed, is as you pointed out, that people don't want to take responsibility for the action. Thus the traditional executioner's hood. I admit that there are some people who cause such great harm to their fellows and the society they live in, that execution will be a viable solution. I don't think that lifetime imprisonment is a humane practice and I think that at this point, correctional practices and techniques can only be so effective and only for willing participants. That said, I do think that we all should take responsibility for the killing of prisoners, but diffusion of responsibility is very real. If there were some way to impress the personal responsibility and burden of killing on each individual who benefits from it, as well as support structures in place to help people understand and deal with those feelings and experiences in a constructive way, I think that we might all be better for it. But, that's still firmly in the realm of science fiction, as far as I know.It doesn't make me want to vomit anymore, but it took quite a long time to get used to.