Briefly Delving Into the Kennedy Assassination

...ORIGINALLY WRITTEN OCTOBER 6, 2010...

     Okaaaaaay, sorry to get off on one of my soapboxes, but if I'm gonna rant about anything it might as well be something I know about. I'm putting together a rather simple documentary on the Kennedy assassination, something I've been studying since 1993, and it's all focused on Lee Harvey Oswald. So I've been looking up some films to get footage from and I've been overrun on youtube by these people claiming the weapon that was discovered, a 6.5-millimeter Italian Mannlicher-Carcano was a fast and accurate weapon and they have all these tests firing at a target. Tests done showing how well the bolt can be operated were done as well and the purpose is to "prove" Oswald did it. First of all, even if you can prove anything in these tests it at best proves with the weapon avaliable Oswald "could" have done it. It proves nothing. In 17 years of study I have reached several conclusions, some of which I have tested personally, and when all is said and done as far as the assassination event goes Oswald was not a shooter. ONE: Oswald could not have made it down to the second floor lunchroom before he was first seen after the assassination there by Dallas Officer Marion Baker. TWO: Of the nine witnesses who saw people on the sixth floor around the time of the assassination, only one claims it was Oswald there (and more than half the witnesses said two people were there on the floor). THREE: The Carcano rifle cannot be positively tied to Oswald for several reasons. 3a. The weapon supposedly reached Oswald through his mailbox through an alias he used, Alek Hidell; but in his P.O. Box application he did not clear any other name than "Lee Oswald" to recieve mail there. 3b. No prints of Oswald's were found on the weapon, that is until after Oswald died and agents went and fingerprinted him; then miraculously a print of his showed up on the weapon. 3c. It's claimed Oswald snuck the weapon into work in a long paper package that the only two witnesses for it say was no longer than 28 inches (when the Carcano, even broke down, is about 35 inches long). And after Oswald entered the building not one of the 75 employees in the building saw him with any package of any kind. The package supposedly found was not photographed on the sixth floor, even though every other piece of evidence was photographed there, showed no evidence that a rifle had been placed inside of it. FOUR: None of the three empty rifle shells (Commission's exhibits 543, 544 and 545) found on the sixth floor could have been involved in the assassination. 543 and 545 both had markings from the rifles magazine, meaning they were both the last rounds loaded from a clip, which couldn't be the case because they were both in the same clip. Neither 543 and 544 had marks from the rifle's bolt, meaning neither had been ejected from the rifle, which would have had to be the case if a clip was used and rapid firing were possible. And 544 alone had a dent in it making it impossible for a round to have been loaded within. None of these shells were involved in the assassination at all. Anyway, that's just a portion of the reasons I've reached the conclusion of Oswald's innocence, but back to where I started; all these people ranting about how accurate the weapon is and thus, by some magic, automatically proves Oswald's guilt (which again, it doesn't).

                First off, every single one of these tests has been with, agreeably yes, the same model of weapon that Oswald supposedly used. However, just by looking at them, these Carcano’s used are always in much better condition. In fact, almost perfect condition. They always either forget, or conveniently ignore several factors. One, the Carcano Oswald purchased was never in that good of condition to begin with. The scope, in addition to being misaligned, was mounted for a left-handed shooter. Oswald was right-handed. The bolt on his weapon was much more difficult to operate that others of its make, which is what started to whole idea that Carcano’s are hard, herky jerky weapons to use. Furthermore, the firing pin on the “Oswald Carcano” was so rusted that it had to be reinforced before the Commission could perform tests with it. This weapon was much worse off than any other one that’s been used to supposedly “test” it. This further begs the question of why someone would use such a shoddy weapon for such a significant feat?

                Also, a majority of these tests look to disprove the idea put forward that a Mannlicher-Carcano cannot fire and then be reloaded in less than 2.3 seconds. Now obviously that figure has been disproven time and time again, not by much though. But again, in disproving that figure, suddenly the alternative is that Oswald did it, period. This is ridiculous, but you know, it’s the perspective these egotists come from. Instead of just saying, here’s my five cents, I think this was wrong and proving it such can cast a new light on things, no, they perform some little test and think that makes everything else insignificant. And in these tests, whose goal is to discover how quickly the rifle can be fired and then reloaded to fire again, they don’t bother to aim (cause obviously it’s a timed test). The fact of the matter is however that Oswald would have also had to re-aim his rifle, at a moving target mind you, after loading the next round into the chamber. He was aiming at a target that was moving away from him, making each shot more difficult than the one before. And yet, as the official story goes, Oswald completely missed the vehicle on the first shot (perhaps by more than 20 feet, even though this was the closest shot and the one he had the most time to aim for), but then strikes President Kennedy and Governor Connally with the second shot (the deemed “magic bullet”) and then strikes the President dead on in the head with the third shot.

                The simple fact of the matter is none of these tests prove anything in the case of the Kennedy Assassination because much better versions of the murder weapon were used under simpler conditions shooting at a stationary target. Hence it’s easy to understand how easy it was to perform these tests while the top of the line sharp-shooters the Commission used could not perform the feat (in which they used “Oswald’s” Carcano to shoot at moving targets). The differentiation is more than obvious and it seems just another effort by people to prove something one way or another to just spike their own egos as oppose to really trying to figure out at least everything we can about what happened that day. Obviously not everything will come to light, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth pursuing. Have a good day everyone!