Well, for those of you who think you could easily make that shot, try making it 3 or 4 times in under 7 seconds with a bolt-action rifle.
The FBI tried to do exactly that. They took three of their best marksmen, set them up in a tower with an unrestricted view of three targets which represented where Kennedy’s body would have been as it moved down the street, and had them fire as fast as they could. They were given as much time as they wanted to set up on the first shot (a luxury Oswald didn’t have), and the targets were not moving.
Not one of them hit all three targets.
Then they took some of their weapons instructors, gave them the same rifle, and had them work the action as fast as they possibly could to see how fast they could fire three shots. They just had to hit a target 10 meters away, to account for the movement of the rifle. It turns out that the time of the three shots on the Zapruder film is right close to the maximum theoretical limit for moving the action of the gun, without even aiming. This highly important information comes from… The Warren Commission Report.
Oswald’s total marksmanship training amounted to two days on the Marine range, where he qualified with average scores, years before the shooting. The men who tried to re-create the shots were professional marksmen with thousands of hours on the rifle range, and current skills.
Then the House Select Committee ruled that there was in fact at least four shots, after computer analysis of an audio tape recording taken from an open mike on a police motorcycle.
If there were four shots, then Oswald’s feat moves from the range of highly unlikely to flatly impossible. Because of that, the House Select Committee on Assassinations ruled that there was a conspiracy.
This cracks me up. Lawrence, Mjollnar, et. al… YOUR evidence is “Case Closed”? In case you haven’t read, that book was debunked by the conspiracy wonks as bad as Garrison and others who have painted another picture.
I guess it depends on where your bias is when you read something, or what you believe… if you think Oswald did it, that’s fine. Hell, maybe he did. But the original record of “proof” was the Warren Commission Report… and we all know how many holes have been found in that.
I guess my simple answer could be “read On The Trail Of The Assassins. It’s covered there.” But frankly, that’s just as narrow minded as can be. Just because it’s written down in a book doesn’t make it so, whether it’s in Case Closed or any other book.
None of us know… none of us were there. and the trail is too cold to start re-investigating. Posner sold a lot of books… but if the case was indeed closed, people wouldn’t still be debating this.
dhanson, I recall seeing a “fourth bullet” documentary in the 70s. Checking all the available sources, they postulated that the 4th bullet was actually an echo that was heard on some sources but not others. Personally, I don’t know enough to believe that or not. But in the same documentary they showed a marksman with a bolt-action rifle. When they started the timer and said “go” there was no way the marksman could squeeze out three shots in 4.6 seconds. However, when they started the timer WITH the first shot, the shoter got the second and third shots off in under 4 seconds. So it really depends on how you run the test.
Just one other thought about conspiracies. If you look at things the government genuinely tired to cover up (involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion, the My Lai massacre and Watergate) so much information was being leaked by so many sources that the cover was blown in a matter of weeks or months. Look at all the attention the Kennedy assasination has gotten over 26 years, and there’s still no “unified conspiracy theory” that people agree on. maybe because the CIA, military, Mafia, John Birch Society, Cuba, et al, weren’t involved?
I’m glad you pointed out these two pieces of evidence that go against the “acting alone” theory: the “not-enough-time-to-shoot-three-shots” idea, and the “fourth shot” idea. Both have been vacated by anyone with knowledge about the case.
In Case Closed, Posner convincingly shows that it was Oswald’s first shot that missed, not his second as the Warren Commission determined. His first shot would have been when the limo was almost directly underneath the window, but it’s very conceivable that the live oak tree in that spot could have deflected a bullet. Any decent marksman (of which Oswald was definitely one) could have pulled off the shots at an almost liesurely pace. In the Zapruder film, you can see when the shots took place, because Mr. Zapruder twitched each time there was a loud noise, and the movie noticeably jiggles there. This little detail was missed by the Warren Commission.
About the House Select Committee and the fourth shot theory - this was disproved almost twenty years ago, right after they reached this nutty conclusion. The sound on the police motorcycle radio, from which they did all these sound-bounce models and gave us the phrase “grassy knoll”, was plainly shown to be recorded several minutes after the other three shots. Not even the conspiracy kooks use this anymore.
For people who put stock in Garrison’s book, I think you need to get some more Straight Dope books and figure out the difference between sources who are credible and who are not. Jim Garrison was a nut, and widely recognized as a nut by any impartial person who talked to him. The fact that Oliver Stone used him as the central heroic character in the JFK movie tells me more about Mr. Stone than about the JFK facts.
Let an old, former biker put the final nail in the coffin of that police radio recording: American motorcycle cops of the time rode either Indians or Harley-Davidsons, which all used long-stroke, large-displacement V-twin engines. They back-fired A LOT. That is what those “gun-shots” on the recording probably were.
I was in the Navy. In boot camp, I once had to fire a rifle from a prone position at a target that was, I guess, fifty feet away. Out of a possible 30 points, I scored 28. I wore thick glasses then and I still do. I had also never before fired a rifle of any kind. (BB guns don’t count.)
Now, my target was not moving and I had more time to fire than Oswald had and I wasn’t under the kind of pressure he was. Nevertheless, I think he could have pulled it off. It is in the realm of possibility.
The newer report made in 1979(?) concludes that there was a conspiracy.
It only takes TWO people to constitute a conspiracy, folks. It didn’t have to be LHO and the KGB and the CIA and the Mafia and LBJ(!) all working together, all sworn to secrecy for the rest of their lives, several of them murdered just as they were about to tell.
Maybe it was my mother. Yeah, she did it while Dad and I were on the farm. My Dad had a rifle and he didn’t take it with him. We had another car and we lived only ten miles from downtown Dallas. I’ve never actually seen my mother fire a gun, but maybe she took target practice when we weren’t around, just waiting for the perfect opportunity…
Look, I care so little about this case that I’ve not even seen the Oliver Stone picture, and personally I don’t care if the Illuminati or John Wilkes Booth, Elvis Presely or Jesus Christ Himself killed Kennedy.
However, it seems to me that it was pretty goddamn out of character for Ruby to murder Oswald, and I’d like to hear some more about this without doing any tedious research. Now don’t point me to your stupid book, quote from it!
Okay, so it was only three shots, in 5.6 seconds. With a bolt-action rifle. With a moving target. From a couple hundred feet.
Try it. I’ve fired a lot of bolt-action weapons, and cycling the bolt pulls the gun significantly from its line of aim. You have to re-acquire the target through the scope, which has a fairly narrow field of vision. This takes some time. As I said, the three marksmen who tried to repeat the feat ALL failed, and they were much better shots than Oswald, and much more current in their shooting skills. And they were shooting at non-moving targets, knew exactly where they would be and where they’d have to move the gun. With no trees moving in and out of the sight picture.
It’s maybe remotely possible. If this was the only questionable part of the case, I’d accept that a miracle happened and an average shooter got lucky. But when you add in all the other coincidences and contortions required to come up with a lone gunman, it strains credibility. To the breaking point.
I’m not a conspiracy nut. I’m a hardened skeptic, as most of you may know from my other posts. But I also understand statistics. Maybe it’s possible that a bullet when through two people and caused seven wounds without shattering or markedly deforming. But it’s a longshot. Maybe a hundred to one. Maybe Oswald made the shots, but that’s maybe 50-1. Maybe a random muscle spasm caused Kennedy to move backwards, but that’s at least 100-1. Maybe Jack Ruby didn’t know Oswald, even though they lived a few blocks from each other and had several mutual acquaintances in a city of over a million people. But it’s highly unlikely.
I could throw five or ten more unlikely occurances in there. We can believe that they all happened, or we can accept that maybe there was another shooter. I don’t know who, but I know what the more compelling argument is.
Like I said before, it can be anyone but knowing guns, its got to have a second person. I have fired a bolt action carchano(sic) at a gun collectors house once and even at perfect working order, its still a lousy gun. The working mechanism is shoddy, the bolt itself is hard to accurately “shuck and fire” and above all, the weights are strange in it. Now take into effect that Oswalds gun needed to do it in the allotted time with what was described as a ‘used’ looking gun with a off sight.
My own theory is that there was a conspiracy. It is my belief that Oswald was hired by Kennedy who had been rendered both impotent and a little crazy by the huge number of aphrodisiacs he had ingested as president. Realizing that he had nothing left to live for and would be remembered as a shallow opportunist with a zipper problem Kennedy opted for the only logical course still available to salvage his legacy ‹ assasination. The reason Oswald seemed such an uncharacteristically good shot that day is because Kennedy was deliberately moving his head in an effort to meet the bullets. It’s all so pitifully obvious.
I’m more concerned with the deaths of the little kids who get shot as bystanders in today’s drive-bys than I am with Kennedy’s death.
If all of you road-show versions of Sherlock Holmes are so ^&-*@# interested in justice , then get off your dead behinds & try to solve one of ** those ** murders. All of you so-called “experts” who volunteer , say “Aye”.
Total silence. :rolleyes:
None of you genuinely care that a man died, much less that the President of the United States was killed. It’s just another fad to you.
After 30 + years, nobody is gonna find out anything; & nobody even knows if there’s anything to find out. Dry up. Or better still, report the crimes that occur in your community, so that innocent lives can be saved today.
If there was a conspiracy , & I doubt it; it was a post-assassination attempt on the part of the FBI or other agency to conceal the fact that they were incompetant enough to make blatant security errors. They f***-up, they cover-up. Simple.
“Show me a sane man, and I will cure him for you.”----Jung
It just so happens I did solve the drive-by murder of a child. It turns out that he had been asking questions about the Kennedy Assasination at the exact moment of his deminse. Coincidence? I think not. Rather than being thanked, I was kidnapped and am now being forced by the CIA into annoying people by leaving irrelevant, sanctimonious postings on the Straight Dope Message Boards.
I saw a program on the History Channel just this morning. The 1992 congressional committee ordered the CIA to turn over everything they have on the assasination. Everything. Guess what? Documents hidden by the CIA show that Oswald was on their payroll! It seems likely that he “turned” while in Mexico, because he was witnessed meeting a known Soviet assasin. I don’t know if there was a second gunman or not, but Russia and/or Cuba look like pretty good candidates for anyone who doesn’t buy the Lone Nut Theory.
–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
There sure was a second gun. I was not even born yet when it happened, and I am willing to bet that all of us who posted were not there to see it live. However, we do still have one unbaised witness: The Zapruder film. I presume we all accept this film as genuine, no special effects or tampering. What really bothers me is that if the 2nd shot entered Kennedys back, the third shot should have done the same if it were fired by the same person from the same location. This did not happen, I have seen the film, I am sure we all have. Kennedys head is struck from the front or front/right, the impact of which causes his head to whip back and to the left. Its on film!! This also explains the huge exit wound in the back of his head… the hole is larger hence “exit”. Either Oswald (if he did any shooting at all) instantly transported to another location to make that 3rd shot, or there was at least a 2nd gun.
“Wow! Spider-Man! Are you really friends with the X-men?” "Not since Cyclops tried to use my viewmaster."
(Marvel Team Up #1)
Has anyone seen the film, “Arlington Road” with Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins? After having watched this film, you can see how the government can stick to their “lone gunman theory” for so long. Very, very spooky! And a very good film, loads of tension.
My two cents:
I read that the LHO shot by Jack Ruby was taller and missing a few birthmarks/scars than the “real” LHO. So, let’s do an autopsy. Compare his USMC physical with the Dallas coroner’s report.
Also, I’d like to take a Jeffrey Dahmer-type, place him in a slow motorcade in Dealy Plaza and see if his head snaps BACKWARDS due to a shot from BEHIND!
Mjollnir, I’m with you. I give up. Either you are a conspiracy nut or you understand a well-researched and well-documented book like “Case Closed”. READ THE DAMN BOOK BEFORE YOU CRITICIZE ITS FINDINGS! Sorry, I got a little out of control there. And I am not going to waste any more of my time debunking BS that is clearly debunked in the abovementioned book.
C’mon! Haven’t you guys seen the X-files episode that showed that the Cigarette Smoking Man did it?
My dad read a book by Sam Giancana (or someone from the Giancana family) that told of the very close ties between the mafia and the Kennedy family. At least my dad is now convinced that the Mob was in on it.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
-H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”
