J.D. Tippit was by all accounts a brave and dedicated American family man.
J.D. Tippit was the eldest of seven children sired by a Texas sharecropper father and a mother who went by “May Bug.” J.D. was his actual name. It didn’t stand for anything else.
Tippit fought during Operation Varsity, the airborne operation to jump the Rhine River.
J.D. saw combat in World War II as part of the 513th Parachute Infantry. He earned the Bronze Star for Valor during Operation Varsity, the Allied airborne crossing of the Rhine. After failed post-war efforts as a rancher, cattle farmer, and stove installer he took a job as a patrolman with the Dallas Police Department.
This was J.D. Tippit’s Dallas PD patrol car.
In eleven years’ service with the Dallas PD Tippit was twice cited for bravery. He also worked two part-time jobs to help support his wife and three children.
On November 22, 1963, Patrolman J.D. Tippit heard a radio call about a nearby shooting. Following a physical description of the suspected shooter, Tippit pulled his cruiser up to question a suspicious man walking purposefully along East 10th Street.
The killer’s revolver was a Smith and Wesson Victory Model with a 2-inch barrel.
When Officer Tippit stepped out of his patrol car the suspect produced a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver and fired four rounds. One shot caught Tippit in the chest, while a second hit him in the belly. A third struck the policeman in the right temple. The fourth bullet struck a button on his uniform and stopped there. Tippit was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital some ten minutes later.
Lee Harvey Oswald was an enigmatic figure. The undeniably odd nature of his life has fomented dozens of conspiracy theories.
Tippit’s killer was a former Marine-turned-Marxist revolutionary named Lee Harvey Oswald. It was for Tippit’s murder that Oswald was initially apprehended. Multiple witnesses identified Oswald via lineup later in the day, and the shots that killed Tippit were conclusively matched to the revolver Oswald had on his person. A bystander quoted Oswald as having muttered, “That poor dumb cop” as he ran away following the shooting.
Forty-Five Minutes Prior…
The Oswald rifle was a scoped Italian Carcano 91/38 that was remarkably compact.
The original Oswald Carcano is currently secured within the National Archives and Records Administration Building in College Park, Maryland.
Forty-five minutes before the shooting death of J.D. Tippit, the official account holds that Lee Harvey Oswald crouched behind a surplus bolt-action 6.5x52mm scoped Italian Carcano M91/38 rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. His vantage gave him a perfect field of fire over the Presidential motorcade passing below. Oswald purportedly fired a total of three rounds from ranges of between 53 and 81 meters over a span of 8.3 seconds.
The Zapruder film offered an indispensable yardstick by which to analyze the details of the assassination.
Abraham Zapruder, a local garment manufacturer and amateur cameraman, captured the entire sordid episode on silent 8mm color film. This film became the most analyzed moving picture in history. In 1999 the US Government paid Zapruder’s heirs $16 million, or $615,384 per second, for the rights to include the film in the National Archives.
The round-nosed 6.5x52mm cartridge was a primitive but breathtakingly effective round.
Oswald’s first round purportedly missed. The second bullet, a round-nosed design that was obsolete by the end of World War 1, struck President Kennedy from behind in the upper back.
After being hit in the neck President Kennedy responded reflexively.
The long blunt bullet tore through the President’s neck, slightly damaging a vertebra as well as the apex of his right lung before exiting the centerline of his throat just beneath his larynx. This injury caused Kennedy to reflexively raise both clenched fists upward. The tumbling bullet also nicked the edge of the President’s necktie.
Governor John Connally was riding just ahead of the President and subsequent caught Oswald’s bullet after it struck Kennedy.
This still-energetic round now punched deep into the back of Governor John Connally below his right armpit. The round struck sideways and created an oval-shaped entrance wound before smashing through four inches of his right fifth rib and blowing out the front of his chest just beneath his right nipple. The exit wound was 2.5 inches long. The bullet track created a pneumothorax wherein air entered the pleural space and allowed the Governor’s lung to collapse.
This same bullet then struck Connally’s arm just proximal to the wrist and shattered his radius bone into eight distinct fragments. The bullet finally exited his right palm and came to rest within his left thigh. Connally ultimately survived. The wildly circuitous route of this single bullet has spawned countless conspiracy theories. However, I have myself seen bullets do some extraordinary things as they transit through human flesh.
Oswald’s final round struck the President in the head and killed him.
Oswald’s third round killed the President outright. This bullet penetrated Kennedy’s head from behind before fragmenting and creating a massive exit wound. Pieces of scalp, skull, and brain were subsequently liberally disseminated. Watching the Zapruder film on YouTube remains breathtakingly horrible more than half a century later.
The Shooter
Lee Harvey Oswald was the product of a difficult childhood.
Lee Harvey Oswald’s upbringing was decidedly troubled. During childhood, he burned through twenty-two residencies and a dozen different schools while manifesting a wide variety of behavioral problems. At age 17, he had his older brother sign an underage release form and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.
Oswald enlisted in the Marine Corps before his 18th birthday.
Oswald studied to be an Aviation Electronics Operator but was, like all Marines, also trained as a rifleman. His best-recorded score with a rifle was 212 out of 350 for a rating of Sharpshooter. Oswald was ultimately court-martialed for accidentally shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized .22-caliber handgun. He was court-martialed a second time for fighting with one of his sergeants. Oswald was punished yet again after he inexplicably discharged his weapon into the jungle during nocturnal sentry duty in the Philippines.
Soon after Lee Harvey Oswald left the Marines he made his way to the Soviet Union via Finland.
In 1959 after his discharge from the Marines Oswald took all his worldly savings and made his way to the Soviet Union where he requested citizenship. When this request was refused he attempted to slit his wrist and was hospitalized in a Russian psychiatric hospital. He was subsequently allowed to remain in the country. The former Marine’s defection made front-page news in many American newspapers. After living in Minsk for three years he returned disillusioned to the United States with his Russian wife, Marina.
Retired Major General Edwin Walker was Oswald’s first target.
Frustrated with life in both Russia and the US a radicalized Oswald attempted to murder retired Army Major General Edwin Walker at his Dallas home with the same rifle he subsequently used to kill Kennedy. Walker was an outspoken segregationist who was relieved of his Division command for distributing right-wing literature to his troops. Oswald fired from a range of less than 100 feet but struck a window frame. Walker was only mildly injured in his forearm by bullet fragments. Oswald’s connection to this murder attempt was not conclusively established until after his death.
The Guns
In the early 1960’s Oswald could order his Smith and Wesson revolver through the mail.
The handgun that Oswald used to kill Officer Tippit was a .38-caliber snub-nosed Smith and Wesson Victory model he had purchased by mail under the alias A. Hidell for $29.95. This equates out to about $240 today. We have discussed the S&W Victory Model in detail in a previous GunsAmerica article.
This is the advertisement from which Oswald ordered his murder weapon. The Carcano rifle is listed third from the top on the left.
This is the letter Lee Harvey Oswald used to mail order his Carcano 91/38 rifle.
My replica JFK rifle was an underappreciated gem accidentally discovered in an online auction. I gave $126 for the gun.
Oswald bought his scoped Carcano 91/38 for $19.95 via an advertisement in the back of the American Rifleman Magazine. He paid $12.78 for the rifle and $7.17 for the attached scope. That equals about $160 today. The advertised rifle was actually a Carcano Model M91 TS Carbine, but the company had sold out of these particular guns. The 91/38, a very similar weapon, was substituted. The easiest way to differentiate between the two guns is the slightly longer barrel on the Oswald example (20.9 inches as opposed to 17.7). The sling also mounts on the side of the stock on Oswald’s gun rather than the bottom.
Oswald’s rifle was displayed for the press soon after the shooting.
The Carcano 91/38 is a surprisingly accurate rifle for its abbreviated dimensions. Numerous recreations of the shooting attempted by trained marksmen have shown the proposed course of fire to be difficult but technically achievable. Subsequent ballistic tests showed the Oswald rifle to shoot 2.5 inches high and one inch to the right when fired from a rest at fifteen meters.
This photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding both murder weapons in his backyard nine months before his crimes represented some of the most compelling evidence tying him to the killings.
Nine months before the Kennedy shooting Oswald had his wife Marina take several photographs of himself wielding both of these weapons in his backyard. Three of these photos were discovered among Oswald’s personal effects after his death.
The Rest of the Story…
The evidence supporting Oswald as the murderer was incontrovertible.
Oswald vehemently denied having shot either Tippit or Kennedy despite overwhelming physical evidence tying him to both crimes. During an interview by the press corps while in prison, he specifically claimed to have been an innocent “patsy”.
Oswald was to be moved from the Dallas PD headquarters to the County Jail in an armored car. He never made it out of the building.
Two days after Kennedy’s murder Oswald was being transferred from Dallas Police Headquarters to the County Jail under heavy escort.
Many Dallas PD officers frequented Jack Ruby’s nightclub, and Ruby was a frequent visitor around the PD HQ.
A local nightclub operator named Jack Ruby was a well-known fixture at the Dallas PD HQ and subsequently raised no suspicions as he moved through the crowd.
This dramatic photograph became one of the most iconic images of the 20th century.
Ruby rushed forward and discharged his short-barreled .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver into Oswald’s belly at point-blank range. A still image of the event earned photographer Robert H. Jackson of the Dallas Times Herald a Pulitzer Prize for photography.
Ruby’s Colt Cobra snub-nosed .38 featured a hammer shroud for easy presentation from concealment.
Ruby’s round entered Oswald’s left side and transited his spleen, stomach, aorta, vena cava, kidney, liver, and diaphragm before deflecting off of his 11th rib and coming to rest on his right side. Oswald bled out in short order. Ruby claimed to have killed Oswald to “Save Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial.” Jack Ruby died in prison of lung cancer in early 1967.
The Kennedy assassination shook the country to its core.
For the first time in human history, the violent assassination of a public figure was captured in gruesome detail for analysis and dissemination.
The murder of JFK, not unlike the 9/11 attacks, changed the very fabric of American culture. Presidential security was taken much more seriously, and the subsequent 1968 Gun Control Act established the current system of Federal Firearms Dealers that remains in operation today. These two pitiless killings ultimately proved just how devastating a single determined assassin could be.
The interior of the Presidential limousine bore the gory aftermath of that fateful November afternoon.
33) Oswald’s two mail-order weapons ultimately birthed the country’s first sweeping gun control laws.
“The advertised rifle was actually a Carcano Model M91 TS Carbine, but the company had sold out of these particular guns. The 91/38, a very similar weapon, was substituted.” What proof does he have that Kleins was out of 36″ rifles?
on this day in history. i was a college FRESHMAN, in ARLINGTON STATE COLLEGE, cutting class for a game of hearts. when the NEWS FLASH BULLETIN came on, i jokingly said “some body probably shot the president”. my card buddies stared at me, when the NEWS GUY stated the same thing. then we all said that L B J made it happen, so HE could be the POTUS. awkward moments in life. then the LIE MACHINES went into overdrive.
I spent 2 yrs at Ft Sill, Okahoma flying in Chinook 46 and 48 helicopters, training 2 nd Lt’s about artillery. I would love to fly in another chopper before I pass on!!! I’m no trying to die as yet but it is on my bucket list!
Johnson’s wife had 55% of bell aviation. They make the huey , think about it
Posted on Dissenter as well as here because GA mods seem not to tolerate any criticism of articles at all. So mods, you may feel you\’re successfully censoring this one, as you did an earlier one that was essentially the same, but nowadays many people will be reading it anyway:The article gives only a small proportion of its space to the guns and is mostly about repeating the Warren Commision report as if it were undoubtedly true.The Kennedy assassination was, while probably not the birth of fake news, certainly a milestone in it.The public was kept from seeing the Zapruder film for many years. Only a single \”journalist\” was allowed to see it. His name was Dan Rather. In those days people trusted CBS News absolutely.Rather, in telling us what the film showed, reported \”The President\’s head jerked violently FORWARD.\” He then demonstrated by doing an extreme nod forward with his own head. Of course, anyone who sees this film will know immediately that this was a total lie. There is absolutely no way he could honestly have had this opinion of what he saw. It was a willful lie. For what purpose? And what happened to him for telling this very big lie about this historically pivotal event? A lie that helped cement the belief that Kennedy was killed by a shot from behind?Was he run out of the journalism profession for this lie? By no means, quite the opposite.Anyone who is interested can find the video of Rather\’s false reporting. It\’s unlikely this was just a personal effort on his part. It was media control of the narrative, fake news, as was the Warren Commission which the author repeats as fact.We really didn\’t need a repeat of fake news from the past. An article on the guns themselves, as promised by the title, could have been interesting.Next time, please don\’t waste everyone\’s time (at best) with repeating 50 year old fake news as most of the article instead of talking about guns, which is what we came for.Thank you.
Posted on Dissenter as well as here because GA mods seem not to tolerate any criticism of articles at all. So mods, you may feel you’re successfully censoring this one, as you did an earlier one that was essentially the same, but nowadays many people will be reading it anyway:
The article gives only a small proportion of its space to the guns and is mostly about repeating the Warren Commision report as if it were undoubtedly true.
The Kennedy assassination was, while probably not the birth of fake news, certainly a milestone in it.
The public was kept from seeing the Zapruder film for many years. Only a single “journalist” was allowed to see it. His name was Dan Rather. In those days people trusted CBS News absolutely.
Rather, in telling us what the film showed, reported “The President’s head jerked violently FORWARD.” He then demonstrated by doing an extreme nod forward with his own head. Of course, anyone who sees this film will know immediately that this was a total lie. There is absolutely no way he could honestly have had this opinion of what he saw. It was a willful lie. For what purpose? And what happened to him for telling this very big lie about this historically pivotal event? A lie that helped cement the belief that Kennedy was killed by a shot from behind?
Was he run out of the journalism profession for this lie? By no means, quite the opposite.
Anyone who is interested can find the video of Rather’s false reporting. It’s unlikely this was just a personal effort on his part. It was media control of the narrative, fake news, as was the Warren Commission which the author repeats as fact.
We really didn’t need a repeat of fake news from the past. An article on the guns themselves, as promised by the title, could have been interesting.
Next time, please don’t waste everyone’s time (at best) with repeating 50 year old fake news as most of the article instead of talking about guns, which is what we came for.
Thank you.
I was in the Marines when Kennedy was shot. The entire Marine Corps went on high alert for days. Before joining, my buddy ordered a Carcano (yes, plain Carcano) through the mail for about $20. It was a nice looking piece but useless for anything beyond about thirty feet. I am intimately familiar with firearms and all the BS in the world will never make the Carcano out to be accurate. I am also of the opinion that crooked ass LBJ was the brains behind Kennedy’s assassination.
Excellent article. I was in 6th grade art class when the principal came in and told us President Kennedy had been shot and school was dismissed. I spent the next few days at home while the schools were closed watching everything on television and imagining how anyone could do such a thing. Some months later I met Bobby Kennedy when he was running for the senate from New York against Keating since my parents were active Democrats back before they became the party of insanity. A few years after that he was dead too.
The deaths of the Kennedy brothers were iconic aspects of my life and the many theories about their deaths have been a topic of my studies ever since. Unlike my parents, I am not a Democrat, but JFK did some good things in his time, and some not so good things. Nevertheless he remains a POTUS who shaped what America became. I wonder what he would think of today’s Democratic party. Probably not much.
Thank you sir, for your service, your continued dedication as a contributing citizen/husband/father,
for the country. I completely enjoyed your article, read to my son, a history education major in his second
year. I was 6 years old when Kennedy was asascinated. A horrible event, yet part of our history. This was one of the best articles I’ve read on the event. Again thank you for what you do.
Regards,
Ken Schaefer
Also of note, and written on a card in the photo of the assassination rifle, is that the rifle is erroneously designated as a Mannlicher Carcano. It is actually just a Carcano, as the Mannlicher loading clip and magazine were modified.
Did you know that Ruby was in debt for over 1 million dollars even though he had been skimming money off of the Mob operations in Dallas. The day after Ruby killed Oswald all of this debts were mysteriously paid off. And by the way the Mob had found out that Ruby was skimming money off of them. Now do you see the real reason Ruby killed Oswald, he had no choice, he owed the Mob a favor for stealing so much money off of them.
I was a second grader on that day in ’63 and the assassination haunted my life for years. I was open to conspiracy theory until I finally figured out that at distances of 50 to 80 years, a shooter could have used 00 buck loaded in a shotgun and still hit Kennedy. Tippit is almost always forgotten, a guy coldly murdered by Oswaald. The Oswald-Kennedy connection evidence is so overwhelming I’m still amazed by the naysayers. Somebody once said Americans will jump on a mystery-conspiracy in the face of truth 9 times out of 10 Why?. I guess none of us would like to be called or a chump or worse, but jeeze, look at just the circumstantial evidence and tell me it wasn’t LHO doing the trigger pulling. By the way, the jump seat that held John C. was a few inches lower than the bench on which Kennedy sat behind him. That fact is also typically ignored by the conspiracy buffs. Thnx for a great article, and keeping JD’s memory alive. A true hero!
Now go look up the photos of the car with the bullet hole through the windshield, in which ‘they’ had the windshield quickly replaced, before anything else.
From the above article:
“and the subsequent 1968 Gun Control Act established the current system of Federal Firearms Dealers that remains in operation today.”
http://jpfo.org/filegen-a-m/GCA_68.htm
Startling evidence suggests that the Gun Control Act of 1968
was lifted, almost in its entirety, from Nazi legislation.
JPFO has hard evidence that shows that the Nazi Weapons Law (March 18, 1938) is the source of the U.S Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA ’68). Adolph Hitler signed the Nazi Weapons Law. The Gestapo (Nazi National Secret Police) enforced it. In “Gun Control”: Gateway to Tyranny we present the official German text of the Nazi Weapons Law and a side-by-side translation into English. Even more deadly: a side-by-side, section-by-section comparison of the GCA ’68 with the Nazi Weapons Law. If you have this in your hands, no one can tell you that you’re imagining things.
That is rather well known. The answer that many have to the fact is that the Nazi legislation actually liberalized gun laws in Germany. That claim gets three Pinocchios.
Although the Nazi legislation made guns more freely available, it made them so for a very distinctly segment of the population – “good” Germans. The reason why the GCA was patterned after the German legislation is that Congress was attempting to keep guns out of the hands of inner-city blacks (“bad” Americans). They understood they couldn’t ban them completely (and they sure as hell knew they couldn’t name “colored people” as group that could be denied 2nd Amendment rights), so they needed a way to make it impossible, or at least more difficult, for “certain people” to get guns. Hitler led the way on this front, with the seemingly-liberalizing Nazi legislation that was meant to arm “good” Germans and keep them from everyone else.
But like the income tax, that was sold as a “soak the rich” scheme, after a while they used their creation to bear down on everyone else, with more comprehensive revisions to make things more difficult for EVERYONE.
Thanks for the excellent article, Dr. Dabbs. If some people don’t believe the Warren Report, Gerald Posner’s CASE CLOSED convincingly debunks conspiracy and multiple shooter theories. Yep, the earth is not flat.
Posner was a fool. Go look up the through-the-windshield bullet hole that they quickly replaced to windshield to hide.
You should read “Mortal Error” before you sign off on Posner. There are many troubling issues with the JFK assassination including the external and terminal ballistics that do not line up well with ‘lone gunman theory.’
Despite what Posner has written, Oswald was a mediocre shot that could never have made whose two world class hits on JFK. The scope on the Mannlicher Carcano could NOT be zeroed and the rifle model was NOT highly regarded.
WRONG SHOOTER WRONG RIFLE
The warren report might have been written with the assistance of hokeywood, kalif. Many facts were omitted from that “report”. Many of the strippers employed by ruby were hired out of new orleans from carlos marcello’s clubs. On April 4, 1961, carlos marcello was snatched up and flown to Guatemala where he was unceremoniously dumped. That was his deportation. carlos marcello was a proud, and incredibly powerful mafia don. This was done by the order of booby kennedy, then, attorney general. There’s no denying that the kenney family benefited by mafia assistance in political elections.
One would think that warren commission with virtually unlimited resources would have made that link.
jack ruby wanted to talk. ps….. jack ruby did side-work as a gun runner in cuba. He secured the release of santos trafficante from castro’s jail in cuba. trafficante had no love for the kennedys due to efforts to prosecute him after kennedy became pres.
All this conspiracy stuff in nonsense. All of the bullets came from the same rifle when they were examined under an electron microscope. They all had particles on them from Oswald’s rifle bore. Also I stood where the shot came from in the book depository building and looked at the gold plate in the street below commemorating where JFK was hit. I did not have laser range finder as they had no been invented yet, but it did not look like 80 yards and the target exposure below is a shot I or any decent, not great , shooter could have mad even with iron sights. A good shooter on a good day might have done the shot wit a pistol,Ask your self do you have rifle that can’t hit say a 12″ pie plate at 80 yards?
Interesting article, but a shooter not addressing the utterly different impact modes of the two bullets attributed to (but not necessarily fired by Oswald); i.e., the first behaves as expected like a FMJ military round – yet the second like a high velocity frangible varmint round. This is like a re-statement of the Warren Report.
The CIA has worked with the Mafi since WWII. To prevent work stoppage of the manufacture of liberty ships. The CIA let the Mafia continue to run prostitution rings, sell drugs, control unions and run gambling rings because the Mafia made sure that their were no Union strikes during the war as they controlled the Unions.
After WWII the Mob gave information to the CIA on what was going on in Cuba under Castro.
The CIA hired the Mafia to kill Kennedy because Kennedy was pulling the troops out of Vietnam as he realized early on it was a mistake and an unwinnable war.
Ruby was actually forced to kill Oswald because he owed the Mob a favor because he had been stealing money from the Mob for years and was part of the Mob whose headquarters was in Chicago with a branch in Dallas.
When Ruby finally realized the Mob and the CIA was not going to get him out of prison he volunteered to go to Washington to testify and the U.S. Government refused to hear his testimony. When a news reported asked Ruby about the truth of the assassination Ruby said he would be killed in the prison if he talked. Ruby was interviewed by a local newspaper and said “If you knew the truth about the assassination you would be utterly amazed”.
Several of Rubies exotic dancers claimed that Oswald knew Ruby and had been to Ruby’s club on numerous occasions. Although the dancers were interviewed by local news media they were never asked to testify for the Warren Commission that was inept and most probably whitewashing the entire investigation.
When one watches the Zapruder film of the assassination anyone that has been a hunter can see the killing shot came from the front not the rear and the brain matter was splattered on the rear of the car not the front and the car was traveling so slow the momentum of the car was not enough to have carried that much brain matter forward.
When one realizes how many people were to frightened to tell what they knew of Nixon and Watergate break in its very possible that after the Kennedy assassination those in the government that knew what happened were too terrified ever to breath a word of it for fear of being killed themselves if they talked and that is why it was the most successful assassination in history.
The war in Vietnam was the reason for the assassination and later in time Nixon would commit treason and sabotage the Johnson peace plan and he got away with it which resulted in 40,000 more U.S. deaths and 3 million Vietnamese deaths and in the end Nixon did what Johnson had tried to do and that was get out of Vietnam. As one can see Watergate was insignificant compared to the number of people killed in the war because of Nixon’s sabotage of Johnson’s peace plan and Johnson knew Nixon was doing it but did nothing to stop him or arrest him and have him executed for treason as Nixon was so popular Johnson feared an American revolution if he had done so.
If Johnson had somehow managed to prevent the CIA from killing him as well and he had carried out Kennedy’s plan of withdrawal from Vietnam Johnson’s plans for his “great society program” would have been fully implemented and Johnson would have gone down as one of America’s greatest Presidents. The Death of Kennedy not only resulted in millions more dying in Vietnam but hundreds of thousands of people are still dying in Vietnam today because of agent orange contamination and in the U.S. food imported from Vietnam is contaminated from agent orange and kills Americans to this very day. Thousands more Americans are dying as we speak because Johnson’s plans for Medical coverage for everyone was never implemented because he squandered the budget on an immoral, obscene , and unjust war and through lack of health and drug coverage thousands of Americans continue to die of preventable afflictions to this very day. Yes the death of Kennedy is still affecting the U.S. to this very day as well as Vietnam.
It was very interesting and answered some questions . I remember when watching it happen on TV. Back then hearing 5 shots on TV when it was first on the air ! Within an hour seeing it again there was 3 shots and dead air in spots. Which still has me asking who doctored the tapes the TV tapes ! I had friends that had seen when it happened on TV all said same thing there were 5 shots the first time.
George Hickey , a secret service agent stood up in the following car and his M16 rifle (pistol grip) accidentally discharged into that road beside Kennedy’s car.
Also James Files shot Kennedy with a 222 fireball w/scope from behind the grassy knoll. Gun is now in the Kennedy Museum.
No tracking of the back wound through the throat at autopsy, and original autopsy draft burned by Cmdr. Humes with no witnesses present!!! So much of this article presented with both A Priori and A Posteriori assumptions NEVER proven and chain of custody issues starting from the SS washing out of the limo corrupting the crime scene, this is little more than a very poor rehash of the highly suspect Warren Report!
The Zapruder film definitively debunked the one magic bullet theory this author pushes again. Anyone who knows guns and watches it will see JFK was in a crossfire hit by a bullet coming from the front of the Lincoln. It proves a conspiracy once two shooters were involved, let alone Riby’s Actions which silenced Oswald forever.
This entire article is Warren commition bullshit to cover up the fact that the industrial military complex had the CIA murder Kennedy. Read what Jim Garrison had to say about it. He as the Lousiana Attorney general did his own investigation. Oswald was given a paraffin test for nitrates.
He had not fired a weapon that day. I was 9 years old, home from school with a sore throat. I heard the Bulletin. It said the time, Dallas texas, and “president Kennedy has just been cut down in a hail of gunfire. ” does that sound like a lone gunman to you. If you watn more of the truth. Read the Devils Chessboard.
I wish people would actually read the Warren Report and Wound Ballistic Review. Oswald was the shooter. There was no shot from the front. The agent did not shoot him with an AR/M16. The driver didn’t shoot him.
The Warren Commission was rigged from the beginning. Oswald was a patsy set up to fall by Lyndon Johnson and the mob. There were many shooters in Kennedy’s execution but Oswald wasn’t one of them.
In other words: One pissed off guy with a scoped rifle can’t hit a cantaloupe at 80 yards away. It’s got to be an inside job. Most plausible answer is “Russian Collusion”… If this was rigged then all the detectives, officers and even officer Tippet would have to be part of this. The top player in all of this wild theory would be Jack Ruby since he “allegedly” MAY have POSSIBLY killed the suspect in question. But I heard Ruby was framed. It was a Ruby doppelgänger and a KGB poison dart shot by a reporters camera. It’s all true…
Many years ago I was at the spot in the street where the last bullet hit. If was not 80 meters from the window.. In my car were three shooters who had over 100 Olympic and World Championships medals including Lones Wigger, regarded by many as the best rifle shooter in the world. Wig said ” I wish I was that good a shot ! “.
I’ve been to the museum. It’s an 80 yard shot with a 6 power scope from an unobstructed, elevated position. Could have done it with iron sights.
…except that it wasn’t. Ever see the pics of the limo BEFORE they quickly replaced the front windshield?
With the bullet hole through it?
Go look it up.
2 shooters. If not 3
And with a rifle that shot “2.5 inches high and 1 inch to the right at 15 meters”. Believe it or not.
That caught my attention, too. I wonder if the rifle was dropped or ditched, knocking the scope out of alignment? If not, we have to wonder how on earth Oswald hit Kennedy in a moving car 80-90 yards away.
Oswald, a former Marine, certainly understood the importance of zeroing a rifle. Since he owned it for a long time before the assassination, there can be little doubt that he zeroed it at some point.
I have shot the 6.5 Italian Carcano with a 4x scope and burst 12” balloons at 300 yards using Norma ammunition. The rifle will shoot. I have stood at that window and have driven that street in Dallas. My army career included sniper training and my law enforcement career included extensive firearms training, competition and over three decades of street experience. Oswalds shots were possible and where this loony bin runaway was encouraged or helped I don’t know. This American tragedy is something that has been appealed to a higher court. The ones involved are all before the Lord of all. Justice is served. Good bless our great nation as we live with the consequences.
Thank you sir for keeping history alive. It is much appreciated.
The History Channel ran a rather convincing documentary on a particular Secret Service man with an AR15 in one of the trailing vehicles. Not an intentional shot, but accidental discharge. Like all conspiracy theories, this one was quite convincing too, with a lot of actual documentation. Perhaps the non definitive statement, “Oswald purportedly fired…” means the writer also cannot swear to his information. Only Jesus knows the real answer
Well done article, good job Dr. Dabbs.
Accurate? Everyone of these guns I have ever seen the bores are terrible, corroded, shot out. One shot clearly came from the front.
How was the general spreading “right wing” segregationist material when all of the segregationists were Democrats? Good try at rewriting history for the lefties…..
“Right wing” meant likely John Stormer’s book “None Dare Call It a Conspiracy” and other John Birch materials, which rightly warned of communist infiltration of the U.S. Government. The John Birch Society was smeared by the media and statist politicians.
Gary Allen…
Oswalds rifle was a model 38 with fixed rear sight. Your copy is a 91TS with adjustable rear sight