Interesting recent poll by the Gallup organization on the question of a lone shooter vs. conspiracy–evidently the 8th poll on this question since JFK was shot.
from Gallup Poll
It’s taking way longer than we thought.
You are correct that i have little experience shooting a rifle. I have shot one before, but not since i was a kid, some thirty years ago.
As far as the tree cover and missing the second shot, I don"t know. I’ve heard theories that seem plausible for both the first and second shot being the one that missed. I don’t know which one is correct.
But one thing you mention has been (supposedly) refuted. The scope on the rifle was defective, at least when the FBI got their hands on the gun. It didn’t line up correctly. Perhaps you might know (or someone with experience with circa 1960’s scope technology) how easy or hard it would be to knock the scope out of whack, and would this have occurred when Oswald hid the gun, or was the scope bad before-hand?
I’ve heard arguments that say that the shot was an easy one. Since the shot was easy, the theory goes, Oswald realized that the scope was bad in the first shot and used the rifle sight for the second and third shot. Again, you can twist and turn the information and the evidence like a giant Rubik’s cube, so everyone’s theory is possible.
Can you explain how a missed first shot increases the time that Oswald had to fire all three shots? How does the time increase or decrease based on the first shot missing or hitting the target? 
Only in that it really doesn’t matter which order the first two shots came in. LHO fired three shots with that rifle, one of the first two hitting JFK in the upper back and the third hitting him in the head.
Fart around with micro-possibilities from there all you like. The Rubik’s cube still has only one solution.
The Zapruder Film captures the effects of the neck hit (the “magic bullet”) as well as the headshot. If the first shot is the neck shot then we have a limited fire two more rounds as shown on the film.
On the other hand if the first shot is a miss (which is not really seen unless you count Connelly’s reaction as some do) then miss does not need to squeeze between the neck and head shots.
Correct. A hit/miss/hit sequence would clock in at around 6 seconds. A miss/hit/hit sequence bumps the total time up to around 8 seconds.
You also have to remember that the Zapruder film is only ONE piece of evidence, which has to be interpreted in the light of other evidence (including the testimony of all the motorcade agents and some of the riders). Despite thinking of it as some kind of absolute proof on its own, film and video have captured many ambiguous events that can be sorted out only by using other facts.
It is a rather unambiguous piece of evidence. We see the reactions of those in the car to the shots. If the 2nd shot missed rather than the first the timeline gets squeezed. Wheras memories of the shots can be a bit more fluid.
Oh, I don’t mean to dismiss it in any way - it is one of the prize pieces of evidence of all time. But there are subtleties about it and other video/film evidence that can only be sorted into sensibility by using other known facts… and, by ignoring those facts, sheer nonsense can be fabricated based on interpretations of the film.
I don’t know of any credible investigation that thinks the second shot missed. The Commission report records some of the uncertainties that have been discussed here but was signed off by all seven members as (miss) (neck) (head).
I don’t think any of the investigations did, but some awkward wording or misrepresented wording by the WC led CTers to go with the condensed timeline that does make it a harder shot. Not impossible, but certainly harder. That timeline became part of the CTer mythology (6 seconds!!!).
I don’t have experience with 1960s scopes, just modern ones. Any hard whack can take them out of zero, and a really hard whack that bends or dents the tube or damages the crosshair mechanism can make them useless. Oswald’s rifle was scraped, which (along with the missing shims, which may or may not have been present when Oswald took the shots) could explain why the rifle couldn’t be zeroed. That could have occured sometime before the shots, or Oswald could have dropped the rifle onto the floor and damaged it, or it could have been damaged between its discovery by Dallas police and its receipt by the FBI. There’s simply no way to know.
[QUOTE=Stink Fish Pot]
I’ve heard arguments that say that the shot was an easy one. Since the shot was easy, the theory goes, Oswald realized that the scope was bad in the first shot and used the rifle sight for the second and third shot. Again, you can twist and turn the information and the evidence like a giant Rubik’s cube, so everyone’s theory is possible.
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That is entirely possible, assuming that the scope was damaged before the shot and/or Oswald hadn’t installed the shims. It’s apparent after one shot whether a scope is badly out of zero.
It was mentioned, many times. Witnesses at street level reported hearing a gunshot and smelling powder smoke at street level.
Like most reports from an eyewitness crowd, there is a very large cluster of concurring statements (that largely match each other and the other evidence) and a scattering of completely anomalous ones - people who heard up to eight shots, or only two; people who reported seeing things completely different from what the film and still photos recorded; people who heard otherwise unsubstantiated yells or statements (including one Secret Service agent who testified that JFK spoke after the first hit, which is very unlikely)… just like any other sudden, scary, chaotic event ever investigated.
A few people confused about where they heard the shot from and thinking (possibly through suggestion, possibly through smelling car exhaust or something similar at the same time) they smelled “gunpowder” does not a credible datum make.
There is no reasonable way to doubt that had an AR-15 fired a round within a few feet of hundreds of people, there would be a large, coherent body of statements to that effect - not a few ambiguous ones.
Eyewitness reports of sound direction are just about completely worthless in a space like Dealy Plaza, which has many reflecting surfaces and a large curved structure. Gunshots in that area would have reverberated and reflected all over the place.
In honour of the upcoming anniversary and in recognition of the sheer what-the-fuckery of this and other CT subjects, I move we introduce an exploding-head smiley.
Only if it moves back and to the left…
JFK assassination theories are the left-wing equivalent of creationism.
Young Democrat JFK, universally believed to have been about five times as progressive as he actually was, goes to the right-wing hotbed of Dallas and is gunned down. Who did it? A John Bircher? George Wallace’s bodyguard? Nope - a communist. Not just a communist, but a guy who actually tried to defect to the USSR and also took a shot at a sort of 1963 equivalent of Pat Buchanan.
There’s a certain kind of liberal who can’t square that circle. It must have been the umbrella man…or the New Orleans mob…or the CIA…or…
Left wing? They totally box the compass! They’re left, right, and whacko, in all dimensions and degrees. No way you’re pinning this only on the left, bub!
Clever, but most CTers I have known (and known of) are well to the right in most ways. I don’t see much right-left polarization at all in JFK nutballism itself, and I think trying to sort things that way is applying the thinking of the last twenty years to a prior era.
If the paranoias of the left can be summed up, it’s that the government is the enemy, not shadowy control groups.
This one works. “Haw, haw. Pop goes the weasel.”
So obviously none of these threads exist.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3056073/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3087842/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/579210/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3088076/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2962605/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/988267/posts
And dozens of others.