Paging Oliver Stone -- Leni Riefenstahl is on the line.

The BBQ Pit
41

Sure, when you can sit at a bench and measure each of your shots, taking your time, you’ll more than likely nail your target everytime. After all, you have all day to do it. Try cracking off three in around 6 seconds from a manual bolt action rifle. huh uh.

I’m afraid they were going a little faster then barely above walking speed. Witnisses to the assassination put the speed somewhere around 8 to 10 MPH up until the second shot was fired, where WIlliam Greer then began to slow the car.

Yes, the sharpshooters actually had to put 3 shims in the back of the scope to test fire it, and even then not one of them could duplicate the feet in the alloted time.

That’s hilarious. I have the book and I would hardly classify his efforts as stellar. It doesn’t even measure up to ‘Crossfire: The plot that killed Kennedy’. This book you mentioned does nothing to alleviate the need to debate the issue of the assassination.

WHAT??? The motorcade was moving AWAY from the shooting position of the TSBD at approximately 30 to 35 degrees in relation to the front face of the TSBD. I’ve been to Dealey Plaza and there is no way you could logically take that the motorcade was moving TOWARDS the position of the shooter.

It wholesaled for three dollars at the time of the Kennedy assassination. 3 Dollars. I’ve fired the weapon, it sucks as a rifle. It sucks as a walking stick, and it sucks as a wall ornament.

He was nicknamed ‘shitbird’ because he couldn’t even qualify on the M1. It was a disgrace to not qualify on that rifle and his felow marines gave him hell about it. He was flagged with maggies drawers repeatedly throughout his time on the firing line which is a military term that indicates that you missed the target completely. I have copies of Oswald’s performance records while in the marines and quotes from those who served with him.

After weeks of focusing on his training he managed to make sharpshooter (the lowest that the marines will allow for you to make it through boot camp without being recycled). Sharpshooter is not that big of a deal marksmenship wise. Any hunter with a few kills under his belt could make that classification with ease.

Just before Oswald left, he was recorded doing a shitty job again on the range. He was a POOR shot, and a medium shot on his best day. Cite your sources on these good ratings that you refer to.

I suggest that you study the case a little more before responding. Those of you that make claims that you could have made the shots are either referring to your time on a range where you can take forever to make your shots or are commenting about things you know nothing about.

If you can hit a moving target (at any speed above 5 miles per hour) from 80 yards out through heavy foliage (a texas live oak) with a three dollar bolt action firearm by cracking off 3 shots in under 6 seconds then you are not a common shooter. You are an ACE marksmen, a big difference.

Also, if the shooter was poised in the TSBD in the first place, why not take the shot at Kennedy as he is coming up Main, directly toward the TSBD? It was a frontal shot that allowed for at least 2 more if he missed because the limo at top speed would have taken a bit before leaving the ‘line of site’. Why did Oswald wait for the car to make the dogleg beneath him and take the inferrior shots? The answer is because whoever was in the TSBD was waiting for the car to be in a particular position. The triangulation of fire makes it a turkey shoot.

Lone nut assassin advocates have bigger problems then Oswald’s inability to make the shots. Once you begin to see how they rely on absolutely stupid phenomenon like the single bullet theory and (worse) the jet effect, it becomes clear that you aren’t steeped enough in the dynamics of firearms to make a logical assessments of the situation.

Ask any hunter in the world if he has ever witnissed the head of his kill jerk IN HIS direction when he has made a headshot due to the brains of the animal shooting out of the head on the side opposite the head entry wound. THERE NEVER HAS BEEN A RECORDED CASE. But lone nut advocates want you to believe that this is possible, that shooting someone in the head can cause their head to jerk in the direction from which the bullet came! I’m afraid the discovery of the Zapruder film really had you boys scrambling for an explanation, no matter how stupid, eh?

Lone nut indeed…

42

Y’know, when I was eleven, I signed up for an archery course in a local summer school. I’d never fired a bow before; never even held a real one. First shot, I came within an inch of the bullseye. It was also just about the only time that whole summer that I even hit the target.

Point is, even if Oswald was that bad of a marksman, even if the rifle was that crappy, even if the shot was so incredibly difficult, there’s always room for luck.

43

Luis Alvarez, Nobel Laureate, disagrees with you. Specifically, he does so in the September 1976 issue of The American Journal of Physics.

The film JFK is essentially fiction. There are lots of sites debunking it - The History Channel has one here.

We have gone thru the conspiracy theories in Great Debates more than extensively. Oliver Stone simply chose his depictions based on what would make it look most like a conspiracy, not because they had any relation to the truth.

Jim Garrison, who Stone made the central figure of his film, was a nutcase. The jury rejected Stone’s allegations almost without leaving the box.

Oswald’s rifle cost $21.45, not $3.00 (in March 1963). Cite. Frankly, if I can find that you are wrong on so trivial a detail so easily, it is hard to work up any enthusiasm to knock down any of your other allegations. Sorry.

Open a thread in Great Debates, and perhaps we can play clay pigeons with your conspiracy theories.

Regards,
Shodan

44

Firstly, it was closer to 8-9 seconds IIRC. Secondly, a manual bolt-action, when practiced with, can be operated very quickly. Oswald practiced.

Let us also remember that Oswald missed one of three.

So, 8-10 for the first two shots. With a 50% hit rate. Then the car slows, Oswald takes a little longer. Bam direct hit.

The shims were on the scope because they were not allowed to correct it nor replace in the usual manner. And yes they duplicate his feat, even though they were trying too hard (working for a 6 second time rather than a 8-9 second time). One of them hit 3/3 in 4.5 seconds.

Try this

I’ve fired one, its not that bad a rifle. I hit quite well at a decent range and I am a mediocre marksman at best. The Italian army used it for 1/2 a century and plenty of our boys are in the ground as a result of its accuracy. Its been reviwed by many folks, and Oswald’s model was specificaly rated as being “quite accurate” by the Army Ballixtics labs.

You have no such thing. Oswald twice passed the Marine’s firing test quite well. He was average for a Marine and above average for a civilian. He could easily have made such a shot.

The levels are “Marksman”, “SharpShooter”, than “Expert”. Oswald made "sharpshooter first, then got disgusted with the Marines and let his efforts drop. He managed a “Marksman” rating without even trying.

You’re right though, any hunter with a few kills could have made that rating. Any hunter could have easlily shot JFK.

Col. Folsom’s testimony. Warren commission.

"Colonel FOLSOM. Yes; there are scores and adjective designations as a result of the scores. In the case of the “A” course, Oswald obtained a score of 212 which would, under regulations in effect at that time, have made him a sharpshooter. However, the score of 212 was erroneously designated with
the abbreviation “MM” for marksman. When he fired the “B” course, he is rated “MM” or marksman, and this is a correct designation in accordance with the score fired.

I know more than you and managed to shoot 2/3 in six seconds. It was not a moving target, to be fair, but it was a carcano, it

Funny, I’ve heard plenty of marksmen say otherwise.

This ignores the little details of being spotted by the secret service, the difficulty in firing a rfile down onto an approaching target. Not to mention Oswald would have being shooting a man straight to his face. Psychology.

SBT holds up quite nicely thank you. And there’s nothing wrong with the jet effect. Wrap a melon and shoot it with a rifle. Where did it go?

As for having problems, tell me, where was the ‘real’ rifleman. Oops. No place for him to be for it to work! Either he’s shooting over Zapruder’s head, or he’s a midget in a sewer shooting low velocity bullets. Other buildings? Nope, don’t work.

Hunters aren’t likely to pay much attention to movement of the deer except to see it go down or run away. A quick jerk, a la the three superanalysed frames of the Zapruder film, is unlikely to be noticed by a hunter who just fired a rifle.

Furthermore, dynamics do change between a deer standing on four legs and a human seated in a limo.

Funny how in 40 years we have yet to have any real indication of a conspiracy. Lots on innuendo and lies on the part of the buffs, but never any proof.

45

OH, I forgot to mention. Are hunters really that prone to using FMJ rounds? You need that kind of ammo to get a jet effect, and I was under the imression that hunter’s weren’t keen on having the bullet pass through the thing they are trying to kill.

46

Responding to Model-Shipwright, much of what you said is similar to the disinformation in Stone’s “JFK.” In particular, there is the scene in which Walter Matthau plays Senator Russell Long:

This siterebuts the dialogue. I’m providing merely some excerpts.:

"They’re telling us Oswald got off three shots with world-class precision . . . "
False. It is almost universally agreed that one shot missed the limousine completely from point-blank range. (Stone is, at best, exaggerating about the skill demonstrated with the other shots.)

". . . from a manual bolt action rifle in less than six seconds . . ."
False. The Warren Commission never stated that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots in under six seconds.

"Sure, three experts [test-fired the rifle] and not one of them could do it [duplicate Oswald’s feat]!"
False. This is only accurate if one assumes that Oswald succeeded in hitting his intended target three out of three times.

"-- and accordin’ to his Marine buddies he [Oswald] got Maggie’s drawers – he wasn’t any good. "
It is true that one of Oswald’s Marine buddies, Nelson Delgado, made this comment to the Warren Commission. But documentary evidence from Oswald’s Marine Corps file proves that – during his time in the Marines, at least – Oswald was a perfectly capable marksman.

The cite I linked to is specifically about the errors in Stone’s film. Again, this film has been one of the most powerful perpetuators of false information about the assassination. Many things, including the umbrella-waving man and the epileptic in Dealey Plaza were non-mysteries at the time Stone made the film. He chose to ignore the facts in favor of conspiracy theories that were quite easily disprovable.

47

The rifle in question, the Mannlicher-Carcano Cabine Model 1938 was actually devoloped following conserns about the old 1891 6.5mm rounds power. It was originally designed for use with a 7.35mm round that was supposed to replace the old 6.5mm. However, as the war began to gear up, Italy decided not switch calibres just then, and rechambered the Model 1938 for the old round. However, still conserned with the rounds lack of power, the 6.5mm Model 1938 was equiped with fixed sights set to a short range to discourage far off shots. This range was 300 meters. Previous rifles in this calibre were adjustable out to 1500 meters.

As previously stated, Sharpshooter is in fact the second teir of Marine marksmanship. All Marines must qualify at least Marksman or be recycled to restart rifle training. Today, using considerably less powerful M-16A2s, Marksmen still have to make shots out to 300 meters. I’m not sure what the maximum training range with the .30 Garand was, but I’m sure it was at least 300 meters. And Oswald obviously made these shots, because unlike most other branches of service, you cannot even be a cook in the Marines without at least qualifying Marksman with a rifle.

So, we have a rifle sighted to 300 meters and a shooter trained to shoot at least up to 300 meters. 80 yards is nothing.

Seriously. The DC snipers made head shots at farther ranges than this with a short barreled 5.56mm rifle. Its not amazing, precision shooting. I know people who could do this with a pistol.

48

So what is the alternative truth? That Oswald was a patsy and the rifle was a plant? If so, why was “a manual (cheap piece of shit) bolt action rifle with a defective scope” worth “three dollars” used? If the Secret Masters of the Illuminati are so smart, wouldn’t they have planted a quality rifle with a top notch sniper scope in the book depository to make the fake evidence look better? Did they intentionally plant bad evidence just to taunt us? Or so conspiracy fans could feel superior when they spotted the clue?

49

:rolleyes:

50

Very good point. And they would have had to go through the trouble of “faking” the photographs of Oswald with the rifle.
Bottom line is Oswald owned the rifle, was photographed with it, and used it.

51

I have questions. First, I don’t think that site is from the History Channel, but only has an advertisement for and a link to the History Channel. I could be wrong. But that leads to me to the question. Who is this guy Dave Reitzes, and why should I believe him any more than Oliver Stone? (not that I believe Oliver Stone, though)

Dave Reitzes has this statement on his JFK online site:

My second question is this: Who the hell considers a shot from the 6th floor of a building at a moving car on the street ‘point blank range’??

52

Point-Blank doesn’t mean what you think it does.

It actually means any point on the projectile’s trajectory before the shooter has to correct for drop. With a centerfire rifle this can be really frickin’ far. I don’t know what is for the Carcano’s 6.5x52mm round, but the similar (if superior) 6.5x55mm Swedish Mauser round doesn’t start to drop until around 100 yards. I do know that the Carcano has a curved trajectory, and as such probably rises farther than the fairly flat Swedish round. Either way, its safe to say that the bullets did not start to drop before 80 yards, so strickly speaking, this is point-blank range for the Carcano.

So far we have a trained Sharpshooter with a military rifle shooting a slow-moving target at point-blank range. Why is this hard to believe?

53

Hi, spooje -

You are correct, and the site I linked to is not sponsored by the History Channel.

As to the question of credibility, it is much the same for any claims - consider how well documented the claims are, do the claims make sense, and how probable the conclusions seem to be.

Most or all of the Warren Commission stuff is online at the government archives site to which I linked. They had power of subpoena and the full resources of the government to collect and document data.

I have never seen any serious documentation of a conspiracy theory that made Oswald part of (or the patsy for) a collusion of government or other agencies. Naturally, if you are willing to interpret the absence of data as proof of a conspiracy, there is nothing that cannot be accepted.

The other flaw in most conspiracy theories is their inability to see that some things are not vitally important. What is the source of the discrepancies in the descriptions of JFK’s head wounds? Is it a deep conspiracy, or did it just happen because sometimes people make mistakes?

Why did so many people die who were involved in some way with the investigation? Were they killed to silence them, or did they die because it was forty years ago, and people tend to get old and die?

The controversy over the assassination of JFK is proof of something I have long believed - that if you work at it long enough, and hard enough, and will enough conviction that you are onto something, you can usually come up with an explanation that fits the known facts better than the truth.

The truth is messy, with loose ends and meaningless data. Conspiracy theories know that there are no coincidences - that everything means something, and if interpreted in the correct way, will lead to something no one has ever seen before.

In real life, shit happens. Eyewitness testimony can disagree, people make mistakes, things are sometimes ambiguous. In conspiracy theories, life is like the movies - and the truth is out there.

Regards,
Shodan

54

I think you overstate the case when you guys say that the shot was ‘trivial’, ‘a piece of cake’, etc.

Don’t forget, this guy had to aim and shoot three shots quickly at a moving target, AND IT’S THE FREAKING PRESIDENT! That is a world-changing event, and Oswald knew it. I doubt I could spit under that kind of pressure. And he knew hell was about to be unleashed on him as soon as he pulled the trigger. Under those circumstances, it’s very, very easy for an amateur to jerk the trigger and miss. If you’re a hunter, how many people do you know that could ten shots in the inner ring at 150 yards all day long - and then the first time they shot at a real animal missed the whole beast from half that range?

Oswald had to be a cool customer. And that shot wasn’t trivial. But neither was it impossible, and for the purpose of this debate, that’s all that matters. Oswald was trained with a rifle, practiced with it, and made a middlin’ difficult shot that he should have been able to make.

There’s another aspect which is seldom considered - it’s MUCH more difficult to re-create a shot than it is to do it in the first place. The reason is that the first shot is allowed to have a lot of variance. Oswald COULD have taken ten seconds if he needed it, but maybe he got lucky and picked up a perfect sight picture instantly that would usually take him a second or two to establish.

Or think of it this way. Throw three darts at a dartboard. If one hits the bullseye, one hits the 9 ring, and one hits the 8, that’s pretty good. Now try and repeat exactly that. One in the bullseye, one in the 9, one in the 8. Very, very difficult. BUt that first throw would have been ‘successful’ if any one of a number of combinations had been made. Anything that was above average.

55

Couple of things.

First, my dictionary (American Heritage) defines point blank range as a) ‘so close to a target that a weapon may be aimed directly at it’,and b) ’ close enough that missing the target is unlikely or impossible’. Those are direct quotes.

(Yes, I was surprised that they defined the range after point blank)

It seems to me that the author is using, or at least implying, meaning b. The author is refuting claims that only a skilled marksman could have made the shot, that in fact, it was easy shot.

I’m not saying Oswald didn’t make the shot, but that IS stretching it a bit.

And we have heard in this thread that the Marine level of ‘Sharpshooter’ doesn’t mean a whole lot, that it’s the 1st level of qualification for a marine.

(I don’t know if that’s true, just paraphrasing what was said)

from Shodan

Agreed.

56

Actually, definition A is what is being described as point blank. So close to the target that the weapon may be aimed directly at it.

See, you get far enough away, you have to counter for the shot sinking thanks to, well, good ol’ gravity. And also you have to adjust for wind. With a high-powered rifle, 80 yards is definately within point-blank range.

And no, Marksman is the first level, Sharpshooter is the second. He pulled sharpshooter off his first time. Little bit of practice can improve that.