A bill passed this week by the GOP dominated South Carolina House gives death row inmates an option: if a lethal drug is not available, they can either go to the electric chair or be shot by firing squad.

If the bill is signed into law, South Carolina would join three other states that use firing squads – Utah, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. Ten states, including South Carolina, still use electric chairs.

people are upset about this but being shot by several guns simultaneously probably brings a quicker and less horrifying death than the lethal injection method states currently use, which is another reason we should abolish the death penalty entirely; it's barbaric. https://t.co/MwCKxVNP1N

— Erin justice breyer please retire Ryan (@morninggloria) May 6, 2021

According to the Associated Press, “three inmates, all in Utah, have been killed by firing squad since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Nineteen inmates have died in the electric chair this century.”

“It’s 2021. We should move on from these barbaric forms of punishment that are more medieval than they are modern. Today, our state has taken a step backward and I am ashamed,” State House Democratic Leader Todd Rutherford said in a statement on Wednesday.

The legislation now heads to the State Senate. Governor Henry McMaster said he’d sign the bill if it gets to his desk.

“We are one step closer to providing victims’ families and loved ones with the justice and closure they are owed by law,” he said in a statement.

South Carolina last executed a death row inmate exactly 10 years ago.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, three states still allow hanging as a form of capital punishment. Seven states allow lethal gas.