"There were 46 executions in 2010". For some perspective, if you think the death penalty is commonplace, then you must think getting killed by lightning is very commonplace.

Commonplace as rare events go. Any American can get hit by a lightning; the actuality of suffering a death penalty concerns a much smaller number of people, namely a select few of those imprisoned for life. Especially in contrast to the OP's comparison to Norway, 46 versus 0 per year makes it pretty commonplace. There are over thousand people "on the list" in dozens of states at the moment.