HOUSTON, TX - The Houston-based advocacy group Americans for Traditional Torments held a press conference today announcing their official condemnation of smashing machines, which more and more states and shadowy paramilitary organizations have begun using to brutally execute those condemned of capital offenses.

“Smashing machines are an affront to the rich cultural legacy of American capital punishment,” said spokeswoman Stacy Millicent, as she outlined the group’s decision. “Not only do these contraptions take away jobs from honest, [REDACTED]-fearing American pain technicians, but they’re almost entirely foreign-made.”

General Electric, a prominent manufacturer of smashing machines, responded to these allegations in a press release, stating that smashing machines were “no different” from pain stimulation chambers that AFTT has shown support for in the past, and challenging AFTT’s contention that smashing machines were foreign-made. “General Electric employs innumerable American workers in our cavernous underground factories,” the release stated. “We don’t even know how many. The last time we tried to count them, they turned violent.”

“We aren’t even sure what most of them do,” the release continued. “We also don’t know where they’re coming from. There are machines down there we’ve never seen before. They frighten us.”

Reached for comment on General Electric’s statement, Ms. Millicent called the comparison of pain stimulation chambers and smashing machines “specious.”

“Pain stimulation chambers are a wonderful development,” Ms. Millicent explained, above the sound of faint, desperate screaming. “And that’s because they’re an excellent tool in the arsenal of a skilled pain technician. Smashing machines take no skill, and reduce what was once a highly respected institution to a mere assembly line of prisoners waiting to be bashed into gobs of oozing meat by a careless machine.”

“The art of torture is one I fear Americans have lost respect for,” Ms. Millicent added dourly, as agonized sobs resounded in the background. “Machines know nothing of suffering. Machines cannot glory in the horrors they work.”

Ms. Millicent, idly toying with a long, serrated pocket knife, then excused herself.

This is not the first time Americans for Traditional Torments has been involved in controversy. In 2009, the group sponsored legislation in several states that would have re-introduced vivisection as a punishment for repeat jaywalkers, a move the group’s president Marissa Ekundayo later acknowledged as “overzealous.” The group has also made repeated efforts to promote public heretic carvings, which has garnered the ire of many citizens who feel AFTT’s events place public flesh purity in grave peril.

However, AFTT is not alone in condemning the use of smashing machines. Other groups have expressed dissatisfaction for the technology as well, most notably the Red Cross, which labeled smashing machines “inhumane.” “Smashing machines are an inefficient and wasteful method of execution,” explained a red cross spokesman, “and waste altogether too many valuable fluids.”

Josephine Sacher-Masoch is Approved News 6's pain correspondent. A devout pain cultist since her freshman year at Yale and a lifetime member of the Order of Mortification, Sacher-Masoch holds degrees in journalism, English, and quantum theopsychology. She lives in Walla Walla, WA with her immortal red-eyed cat Muffin in the harem of local bone sorceress Xylinda Overblight.