Slicing Into Consciousness: Guillotines

Over the past several years a growing number of stories refer to guillotines being seen at military bases and prisons and stories of guillotines replacing the electric chair in Georgia for use in corporal punishment. These stories are bubbling into the consciousness of Americans coincident with the transformation of the United States from a nation of Law to a nation of men and lawlessness. 

Concern about guillotines is not a new topic on the Internet; articles concerning the subject go back to at least the mid nineties.  One of the earlier concerns about guillotines was raised back in 1995 when Georgia State representative Doug Teper introduced a bill into the 1995-96 Georgia Legislative session under the heading of HB 1274. The purpose of the bill was to: “To amend Article 2 of Chapter 10 of Title 17 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to the death penalty generally, so as to provide a statement of legislative policy; to provide for death by guillotine; to provide for applicability; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.” [1]

Recently this bill has been mentioned in the context of continuing reports of guillotines being seen on military bases, in railroad cars, and even outside of newly created secret prisons.  The Georgia bill, however, was not passed in the form written above and according to the site deathpenaltyinfo.org, the only method of execution in Georgia is lethal injection. [2]  As of now, I can find no information showing Georgia reconsidering the guillotine as a replacement for the current system of execution. 

The resurfacing of this 1995 Georgia Legislative Bill is misinformation at time when real information is desperately needed. 

Further interest in guillotines was ignited when the Southern Poverty Law Center apparently created a story stating whistleblower, and retired FBI agent, Ted Gunderson made a speech in 2009 to militia groups in Florida saying the Federal Government had 30,000 guillotines in stock and ready for deployment in Georgia.  

A Tale of Two Gundersons

An alarming report was purportedly made by retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson in 2009 regarding the stockpiling of guillotines for use after civil unrest results in large numbers of arrests funneled to newly created FEMA camps. This report is one of the primary supporting pillars of information about guillotines in the alternative news cloud.  The problem with this report is it appears to be made up. The origin of the report finds it way back not to Ted Gunderson, but to a comment made by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group notorious for starting false rumors regarding ‘patriot’  and militia paranoia.  The late Ted Gunderson apparently published no information or articles regarding this information that I can find on the web or from his archived website here : http://web.archive.org/web/20110326201213/http://www.tedgunderson.net/ . 

Even if there were actually evidence that Gunderson did mention guillotines to a patriot group in Florida, Gunderson was long associated with fringe and many times evidence challenged reports during the course of his post FBI investigations.  His statement alone would not be enough to conclude guillotines were being stockpiled.

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