the.com/firing squad

means A group of soldiers assigned to execute a condemned person by shooting them simultaneously, by order of military or legal authority.

from Straightforward military compound: 'squad' comes from French escouade, traced back to Old Italian squadra ('square' or 'battle formation,' from Latin quadra), originally meaning a small group of soldiers organized together. 'Firing' simply refers to the discharge of guns. The practice itself is old, but the device of giving one or more rifles a blank round — so each shooter can privately doubt it was his bullet that killed — is a well-documented tradition, not folklore. It's an organizational answer to a psychological problem: spread the act across many hands so no single conscience bears it alone.