A Thought Regarding Oswald as the Shooter in the JFK Assassination

I know this subject has pretty well been covered from every possible angle over the years and I almost feel guilty for bringing it up amid all of the other topics here, but this is just something that I have been thinking about for such a long time and yet have never seen, read or heard anyone else bring it up, ever.

Although I do have my doubts regarding the Warren Commission's official report and stance on the entire unfortunate event, my topic focuses around the widely-accepted view that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed shooting from the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. For the sake of this discussion, let us assume that this is fact.

Over the decades there have been much attention and speculation drawn upon Oswald's shooting ability. Depending on whatever person was questioned at whatever time or conflicting documents on his military training, it has been variably reported that his shooting ability ranged anywhere from poor to excellent. The common consensus in my opinion seems to portray Oswald's shooting ability as 'average'.

Aside from his questionable shooting ability, it has been suggested that a shooter from that particular location would have had their line of sight interrupted by foliage from a large tree, preventing a clear shot from being carefully aimed at a moving target, in this case President Kennedy. It has also been postulated that the rifle Oswald was using had an incorrectly-calibrated scope, meaning that it would have been even more difficult (though not impossible if the shooter were to compensate for it) to aim accurately.

So for the sake of this argument, let us assume that it's all true: Oswald, a shooter of average capability, using a rifle with a misaligned scope, taking aim from the sixth floor of the schoolbook depository at a moving target through dense foliage.

Common sense and many simulated tests have shown that such a shot would have been remarkably difficult for even highly-trained sharpshooters, let alone Oswald. So here's my question:

What if the third bullet was a lucky shot?

So much has been focused on Oswald ability, or lack of ability, or if there were other shooters. What if he just decided to let the third bullet fly, just like a hail-Mary pass, and hope for the best?

I started thinking about this several years ago when I was playing around with a pellet gun in my large backyard. I'm a horrible shot; I couldn't hit water if I fell out of a boat. I've fired a few small rifles in my life, and just as with the pellet gun I could barely hit a target more than a few paces away. I'm terrible, and yet, every once in a while, I would get a virtual bullseye on whatever I happened to be aiming at at the time (mostly when I wasn't concentrating on aiming so hard, ironically enough). Repeating such a shot on demand would always prove impossible for me.

Statistically 'lucky shots' are bound to happen. I'm sure many of you out there who have greater experience with firearms might be able to back me up on this, and have pulled off some remarkable shots which were out of the norm of your usual ability. So why couldn't this have happened to Oswald on that fateful day?

I'm just surprised to think that I may have been the only one to theorize this, and would love to hear some input about it. Could Oswald have simply blundered into infamy by means of luck, or am I - just as with countless other theories on this subject - potentially wrong?

reply to post by ArchAngel_X

We have a resident JFKologist and he made a thread on a commission type group that was later than the Warren Commission and gathered new facts and covered previously unconsidered angles.
The Controversial HSCA Investigation and Beyond..,
I'm not trying to derail your thread but this member, recently promoted to Moderator whizz-dom, has done many extensive JFK threads and the one I linked may be of relevance to yours. Personally, I think Oswald was a patsy.
ETA I also think the facts presented in the JFK movie by Oliver Stone (among other places) pretty much exclude the single-shooter theory as even remotely possible.

I'm not claiming there was or wasn't multiple shooters but there have been many documentaries and experiments that claim the shot really wasn't all that difficult to make. There are numerous issues and irregularities with the warren report but the actual mechanics of the shot may not be one of them.

Assuming, as you have suggested, that Oswald acted alone with a crap gun and marginal skill, he still would have had to pull off 2 lucky shots, not one. Even though the first hit wasn't initially lethal, it was still a pretty damn "good" shot.

reply to post by ArchAngel_X


Who actually believes that Oswald was the shooter in the first place. The conspiracy idea won't go away because the general public from the very beginning never believed what they were told. We had our President murdered, our entire political system was overthrown. We have never received the truth and no justice has ever been served. It has been the proverbial tell a lie to cover the first one until everything becomes a lie. The country will never recover and the populous will never receive the feeling of peace until this is truly dealt with.

So many want to rehash Kennedys assassination , try starting an ATS thread with a collection of evidence.
There is alot of evidence and witnesses omitted in the Warren Report.
Look at who had motive for the killing.
Look at who was on the Warren Commission and who got rewarded and who died and how.
Why would Oswald buy a gun through the mail to kill the president when he could have gone to his local gun store to buy one, gun registration didn't start till 1965 ?
The weapon does not coincide with the bullet, nor the bullet with the holes.Check with J.Edger, he knew.
Do you know who came up with the single bullet theory ? Young attorney, Arlen Spector,from the Warren Commssion, future United States Senator from Pennsylvania.
Why did LBJ have the limo scrapped so quickly ?
Try looking beyond Oswald and start with motive.
And start with Allen Dulles head of the CIA, also a member of the Warren Commission.

The shot was practically impossible. If you've never been to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealy Plaza in Dallas, they don't allow anybody to go into the "sniper's nest", they claim they left it just as Oswald did, so it is walled off with heavy see-through plastic..

However, the 7th floor above is completely empty, so we went to the window exactly one floor up from where Oswald was said to make his kill shot. The first thing I noticed about the location in the building is, it is a very poor place to try to shoot the president once he turned from Houston Street onto Elm Street. The easiest shot to make would have been as the president was heading directly towards the Texas School Book Depository while still on Houston Street. It should have been a clean, easy shot with nothing to block it. Why wait until he turned and the shot became damned near impossible?

That's strike number one against the "Oswald the Lone Assassin" theory.

Strike number two is that Oswald was found on the second story cafeteria only a few minutes after the president was shot. It would have been impossible for Oswald to disassemble his rifle, wipe his fingerprints, stash the weapon, and go down four flights of stairs, then calmly buy a coke and be drinking it when the cops ran in.

Strike number three are all the witnesses who saw and heard gunshots coming from the grassy knoll.

Oswald was definitely a patsy, set up to take the fall. There is no way in hell he could have made that shot as the official story says, not to mention 3 shots, with evergreen oaks in the way, and the angle very awkward. It makes no sense.

I took this picture at Oswald's grave because I feel a terrible injustice was done to this man, and then he was silenced before he could tell the truth.

Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States (chairman) (1891–1974)
Richard Russell, Jr. (D-GA), U.S. Senator, (1897–1971)
John Sherman Cooper (R-KY), U.S. Senator (1901–1991)
Hale Boggs (D-LA), U.S. Representative, House Majority Leader (1914–1973)
Gerald Ford (R-MI), U.S. Representative (later 38th President of the United States), House Minority Leader (1913–2006)
Allen Welsh Dulles, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (1893–1969)
John J. McCloy, former President of the World Bank (1895–1989)

For more than 15 years, from 1991 until his death on December 26, 2006, Gerald Ford was the last living member of the Warren Commission.

General counsel

J. Lee Rankin

Assistant counsel

Francis William Holbrooke Adams
Joseph A. Ball
David W. Belin
William T. Coleman, Jr.
Melvin Aron Eisenberg
Burt W. Griffin
Leon D. Hubert, Jr.
Albert E. Jenner, Jr.
Wesley J. Liebeler
Norman Redlich
W. David Slawson
Arlen Specter
Samuel A. Stern
Howard P. Willens (liaison)



Staff

Philip Barson
Edward A. Conroy
John Hart Ely
Alfred Goldberg
Murray J. Laulicht
Arthur J. Marmor
Richard M. Mosk
John J. O'Brien
Stuart R. Pollak
Alfredda Scobey
Charles N. Shaffer, Jr.
Lloyd L. Weinreb

reply to post by FissionSurplus

Strike number two is that Oswald was found on the second story cafeteria only a few minutes after the president was shot. It would have been impossible for Oswald to disassemble his rifle, wipe his fingerprints, stash the weapon, and go down four flights of stairs, then calmly buy a coke and be drinking it when the cops ran in.

That doesn't seem impossible to me, then again I don't know the rifle or it's take down procedure. I could have an AR stripped in about 30 seconds blindfolded and wiping prints would be easy. Ugh lemme go look up the rifle.

Motive 1

CIA and Allen Dulles

Several failed assassination plots utilizing CIA-recruited operatives from the Mafia and anti-Castro Cubans directly against Castro undermined the CIA's credibility. The reputation of the agency and its director declined drastically after the Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco, and Dulles and his staff (including Deputy Director for Plans Richard M. Bissell, Jr. and Deputy Director Charles Cabell) were forced to resign in September 1961. President Kennedy reportedly said he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds."
Source

Motive 2

Federal Reserve

On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business.
Source

Motive 3

Attorney General RFK HATED BY HOOVER & MAFIA
Within two weeks of taking office Kennedy had declared 'war on crime.' He meant organized crime. He wanted to find a way to prosecute the hoodlums he had summoned before the Rackets Committee. From his old allies in the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, he had obtained a thick, black book on eight hundred mobsters. He handed the book to the task force of lawyers created to handle organized crime cases. 'Don't tell me what I can't do,' he instructed them. 'Tell me what I can do.'
Source

Motive 4

Israel and Mossad

In 1963 JFK was embroiled in a bitter secret conflict with Israeli leader David Ben-Gurion over Israel’s drive to build the atomic bomb; that Ben-Gurion resigned in disgust, saying that because of JFK’s policies, Israel’s "existence [was] in danger." Then upon JFK’s assassination, U.S. policy toward Israel began an immediate 180-degree turnaround.
Source

Motive 5

Big oil

Just before John F. Kennedy was assassinated he upset people like Clint Murchison and Haroldson L. Hunt when he talked about plans to submit to Congress a tax reform plan designed to produce about $185,000,000 in additional revenues by changes in the favourable tax treatment until then accorded the gas-oil industry. Kennedy was particularly upset that Hunt, who had an annual income of about $30,000,000, paid only small amounts of federal income tax.
Source

Motive 6

The military industrial complex

President Kennedy was removed after changing his mind on the Cold War. He refused to invade Cuba during the Bay of Pigs debacle, refusing to start nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis (even though his military advisors were demanding it), stopped atmospheric nuclear testing and began the process to withdraw troops from Vietnam.

In his farewell address to the nation, President Eisenhower warned that we should beware the unchecked power of the military-industrial complex. This speech is one of the greatest in American history, and prescient in understanding what was coming.
The removal of Kennedy (and later, of his brother on the threshold of his victory in the Presidential campaign) led to the escalation of the
Vietnam war, Watergate, the 1980 "October Surprise," the Iran-Contra scandals, BCCI, the invasion of Panama, Desert Storm (1991 war on Iraq), allowing the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City, the stolen election in Florida in 2000, 9/11 and the anthrax attacks on the Democrats and the media, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the stolen 2004 Presidential election (to cite a few of the many scandals since 1963)
Source

You really think Oswald had a better motive and acted alone ?


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edit on 26-4-2012 by Gemwolf because: (no reason given)