Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets'

The Sunday Telegraph (UK) ^ | 6/30/2007 | Tim Shipman

[1066AD]

Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets' By Tim Shipman in Washington, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:30am BST 01/07/2007

Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in assassinating President John F Kennedy, according to a new study by Italian weapons experts of the type of rifle Oswald used in the shootings.

The new findings will encourage conspiracy theorists In fresh tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action weapon, supervised by the Italian army, it was found to be impossible for even an accomplished marksman to fire the shots quickly enough.

The findings will fuel continuing theories that Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy to murder the 35th American president on 22 November 1963.

The official Warren Commission inquiry into the shooting concluded the following year that Oswald was a lone gunman who fired three shots with a Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle in 8.3 seconds.

But when the Italian team test-fired the identical model of gun, they were unable to load and fire three shots in less than 19 seconds - suggesting that a second gunman must have been present in Dealey Plaza, central Dallas, that day.

Two of the bullets hit Kennedy, with the first - the so called "magic bullet", ridiculed by conspiracy theorists - also wounding the governor of Texas, John B Connally, after it had struck the president.

In a further challenge to the official conclusions, the Italian team conducted two other tests at the former Carcano factory in Terni, north of Rome, where the murder weapon was made in 1940.

They fired bullets through two large pieces of meat, in an attempt to simulate the assumed path of the magic bullet. In their test, the bullet was deformed, unlike the first bullet in the Kennedy assassination, which remained largely intact.

The second bullet is thought to have missed its target. According to the commission, the third disintegrated when it hit Kennedy's head. The new research suggests, however, that this is incompatible with the fact that Oswald was only 80 yards away, in a book depository, when he fired. The Italian tests suggest that a bullet fired from that distance would have emerged intact from Kennedy's head, implying that the third shot must instead have come from a more distant location.

The findings will encourage conspiracy theorists who hold that Oswald could not have fired three shots in time. For each shot, he would have had to push up the gun's bolt handle, pull the bolt backwards to eject the spent cartridge case and then forward to slide the next round into the chamber, before turning down the bolt handle to lock it in place.

Nearly seven out of 10 Americans believe that Kennedy was murdered as a result of a plot. Depending on which theory they back, the participants supposedly included any or all of the CIA, the Mafia, the Cubans, the FBI chief J Edgar Hoover, the military-industrial complex and Vice-President Lyndon B Johnson.

It is the second challenge in two months to the view of the Warren Commission that Oswald acted alone. In May, researchers at Texas A&M University argued that the ballistics evidence used to rule out a second gunman had been misinterpreted.

The findings will be a frustration to Vincent Bugliosi, the author of a 1,600-page book, also published in May, which claimed to put to rest all the conspiracy theories of the past 44 years.

The Italian findings will be hotly contested by those who believe that Oswald was a lone gunman - not least because they contradict firing tests previously conducted, using Oswald's actual rifle, by the FBI and the US Marines, and another study by Washington police marksmen using an identical gun.

Oswald would only have needed to reload the weapon twice in the eight seconds to get off all three shots, since the time was measured only from the moment he fired the first shot. The FBI concluded that a marksman could have fired a shot at least every 2.3 seconds.

In his book, Mr Bugliosi details how after just two or three minutes' practice with the gun in 1979, three police marksmen aiming at three targets representing Kennedy at the same distance from Oswald, got away three shots in less than eight seconds.

One marksman hit the targets twice and missed the third shot by an inch. A second shooter scored a "kill" with his second shot.

Mr Bugliosi recounts three separate ballistics tests that found that the magic bullet could have wounded Kennedy and Connally and emerged in similar condition to the real bullet. But that is unlikely to stop the Italian research fuelling another generation of conspiracy writers.

[endthematrix]

But Kennedy (proven with neck wound) and Connelly were shot from the rear and there was a fragment found on the inside that caused the windshield to crack. It was a shot that came from the rear, so it had to be at least an 80yd shot.

[California Patriot]

I understand. It’s just too bad so many conservatives also seem to buy into this. How many, I don’t know.

[ReignOfError]

Don’t act like a liberal. When I said “no one will convince me” I did not mean I would not listen to facts.

You took my statment out of context.

Silly me. I took your words at face value. I won't make that mistake again.

I clearly stated I would not be convinced otherwise based on EVIDENCE I saw of the ACTUAL SHOOTING.

Lest I be again accused of taking you out of context, let's clarify. Are you saying that EVIDENCE of the ACTUAL SHOOTING will not convince you? Or are you saying that EVIDENCE of the ACTUAL SHOOTING has led you to your current belief, and you will not be convinced otherwise?

[News Junkie]

Furhman deals with the curb in his book. Something hit the curb, but was it a direct bullet hit? Probably not. Bullet fragment? Skull fragment?

I wouldn’t hang everything on that curb chip.

3 shots, 3 hits makes a lot of sense to me.

[ReignOfError]

I don’t know who or how, I just don’t think a loser like Oswald could have pulled it off without help from someone.

Yeah, it's not like lonely, bitter losers turn out to be assassins. Well, except Charles Guiteau. And Leon Czoglocz. And Mark David Chapman. And Sirhan Sirhan. And James Earl Ray. And Sara Jane Moore, Squeaky Fromme and John Hinckley, who tried and failed.

Come to think of it, only one of our asassinated presidents was killed by someone who was not a loser -- John Wilkes Booth was a star of his day. And his assasination plot is also the only one that was a well-established conspiracy, albeit a mostly botched one.

"I just don't think a loser like Oswald could have pulled it off" is like the belief of the Kennedys that they can engage in risky behavior without serious risk; it is a belief at odds with an overwhelming weight of evidence.

I also have such a low opinion of LBJ that I wouldn’t put it past him to have been involved.

"He's a bad enough guy to do it" is not evidence that he did it.

[Shion]

>>Since he’s new school and I’m old school I had to remind him to chamber after every shot.<<

I’m lucky, I decided to take my frist firearms instruction from someone I had no emotional attachment to whatsoever, and they started me on a .357 single action revolver, so I’m used to doing it in somewhat the manhandling way. The first thing I did with my semi handgun was train myself to manually chamber each round if necessary, and actually it was necessary, as I had brass getting jammed multiple times in the first 100 rounds. Given that racking the slide is the biggest problem that most women have with semis I’m glad I confronted it to begin with.

>>So the question I have is do you tell your husband he’s Superman or does he already know that’s how you think of him? Either way, it’s sweet and he’s a lucky man.<<

You know, I didn’t much think about it, but now I’m going to go make sure he knows. We’re celebrating our first anniversary today. :)

[Ditter]

You can rant on. I don’t really care who shot Kennedy but some of you who think Oswald did it alone and the Warren Commission was correct sure seem to have a lot of emotion tied up in your opinion. As I said, I don’t care who did it and I have *zero* emotion tied up in the whole subject.

[HEY4QDEMS]

In less than 8 seconds? BWAHAHAHAHA

Easily.

[Shooter 2.5]

In other words don’t let the facts stand in the way, “LBJ’s fault”. See post 250. You fit the profile.

Free Republic is now the mirror image of the Democratic Underground.

[Mr. K]

ok asshole... i tried to be polite...
You did not “take my words at face value” you twist the meaning to be a smarmy little twerp

But since you are too stupid to listen and insist on twisting words ...

The EVIDENCE I saw is a MOVIE OF THE ACTUAL SHOOTING. That movie tells me more (as a scientist) than any ‘discussions’ or ‘analysis’. I know what I can see with my own two eyes, from AN ACTUAL FILM OF THE SHOOTING. And nothing will convince me that I did not see what I saw...

Is that clear?

(I doubt it)

[spanalot]

Don’t get me wrong - I am certain that Oswald fired shots but I am not certain as many are here that he fired all.

I am very sceptical.

And when you add the Oswald hit by a low level Mafia stooge and Jackie’s marriage to one of the most powerful men in the the underworld at the time, this has all sorts of flags popping up. And did you take a look at the Hunt pictures?
I had read something about that years ago but never saw the pics.

[spanalot]

How do you make windage and elevation adjustments to a scope and fire 4 shots in 8 seconds?

Pls edify us.

[spanalot]

“He could see the car come directly “

Another screwy thing.

Hey - how many of you treestand hunters always wait for the deer to come under your stand and start running away before you shoot?

[HEY4QDEMS]

How do you make windage and elevation adjustments to a scope and fire 4 shots in 8 seconds?

First of all we are talking about three shots here, not four.

Secondly, I'm not talking about zeroing the scope, I'm referring to a compensation of aim, (visually), it's easy to do.

One wrong assumption follwed by one piece of misinformation. You're on a roll.

[NCLaw441]

I am not a hardcore Kennedy assassination buff like many here. I enjoy reading the arguments from both/all sides. However, I fail to see what poll results matter in these kinds of things. What people BELIEVE to be the case doesn’t really matter. What matters is what the truth is. If 90% of people THINK the sky is green, that is no evidence of the color of the sky, green or otherwise.

[RobbyS]

Have to finsh that beer before we do anything.

[RGPII]

Kennedy had enough enemies; with out reading some people’s phobias and turning to name calling because they can’t quite muster a valid challenge to the argument.

RFK as AG; busted the mafia bad; Cold War was going on at the time, Bay of Pigs Fiasco and Castro but JFK on the bad side of both sides, doubts on LBJ too.

And all of those documents “locked up” for so much time; does not allow people to further “prove” a theory and indeed adds to further suspicion.

[RobbyS]

Fact is we don’t know what Lee Harvey was capable of doing at that particular point in time and space. Michael Jordon could miss an easy lay-up and lose the game. The worst player in the league could hit a three-pointer at the buzzer from forty feet away and win it.

[quadrant]

Sadly, far too many conservatives do not exercise the critical thinking skills that God gave them and attempt to understand the reasoning of the Left.
Living in CA - as you do, apparently - I find this trait among far too many conservatives who should know better.

[TKDietz]

My father had one of these same rifles, bought before the Kennedy assassination. It was a piece of crap. It was not an accurate weapon. You could just look at the thing and see that the workmanship put into making the thing was terrible. It was junk. I think he paid less than $10 for it in the late fifties. I never believed that anyone could have fired that thing so quickly and with such accuracy from so far away.