When Could Oswald Have "Zeroed" (Sighted-In) the Alleged Murder Weapon?

[Michael T. Griffith]

Say what we will about the Sports Drome story - and I'm not going to dive into it - these folksy characters are about as believable as it gets. I hadn't seen this before, but it's refreshing to see witnesses with no obvious agenda being interviewed by a reporter with no obvious agenda.

Very weird: The bolt-action rifle, wrapped and tied with string, is handed over the fence instead of being brought through the office ... "Oswald" is practicing rapid firing and gets off six shots in 6-9 seconds ... and when "Oswald" is confronted by this toothless old fart about shooting at his targets, "Oswald" says nothing in response (which indeed sounds somewhat Oswald-like).

The video repeats on here - it's really only about six minutes.

Oh dear. Oh dear, dear, dear.

Now, I actually fully agree with you that those witnesses are credible, had no agenda, and were interviewed by reporters with no agenda. But, in viewing those witnesses as credible, you could get in big trouble with your leading lone-gunman scholars for veering dangerously off message. Why? Because according to the Warren Commission, Gerald Posner, and Bugliosi, all of the accounts of encounters with Oswald at the Sports Drome Rifle Range in Dallas were "mistaken."

Why were they supposedly "mistaken"? Because the most credible of the accounts, those of Homer and Sterling Wood, put a man who was a dead ringer for Oswald at that rifle range when the real Oswald was known to be elsewhere, obviously providing more unwanted evidence that Oswald was being impersonated in Dallas before the assassination, which of course "just cannot be because there was no conspiracy."

According to the Woods, "Oswald," i.e., the Oswald lookalike, was using a "6.5 Italian carbine" but with a different scope than the one on the alleged murder weapon. The man was an excellent shot. The man was driven to and from the range by another man.

Both Homer Wood and his son Sterling Wood positively identified photos and footage of Oswald as being the man they had encountered at the rifle range.

Your post suggests you've done little reading of scholarly works that reject the lone-gunman theory, because virtually all of them discuss the accounts of the Oswald lookalike at the Sports Drome. Your post also suggests you don't even have a handle on your own side's talking points.

Here's some of what one of the first and most scholarly WC critics, Sylvia Meagher, said about Homer and Sterling Wood's encounters with "Oswald" at the Sports Drome in her classic work Accessories After the Fact:

By treating these witnesses as a group, the Commission has obscured the
fact that the testimony of Sterling Wood and his father is not subject to
serious objections. Sterling and his father went to the rifle range on Saturday
afternoon, November 16, 1963, when Oswald was not in Irving as usual.
He had remained in Dallas, at Marina Oswald's suggestion that he might be
at the birthday party for one of Mrs. Paine's children that weekend. It was
therefore physically possible for Oswald to be at the rifle range, as the Woods
testified he was. . . .

Dr. Wood testified (10H 387) that when he saw Oswald on the television
screen on the day of the assassination, he immediately told his wife that
Oswald looked like the man at the rifle range. He decided to say nothing
to his son and to see if the boy independently recognized Oswald.

About half an hour later the boy came in and as soon as he saw Oswald on
the TV screen, he said, "Daddy, that is the fellow that was sitting next to me
out on the rifle range."

During his testimony Dr. Wood was shown photographs, first of Larry
Crafard, whom he failed to identify. Next he was shown photographs of
Oswald on the street, with other men in the background. He unhesitatingly
pointed to Oswald as the man at the rifle range. . . .

Sterling, like his father, was shown photographs of Larry Crafard, whom
he failed to recognize. When he was shown a picture of Oswald and other
men on a street, he immediately pointed to Oswald as the man he had seen
at the rifle range. He also identified a photograph of the rifle found in the
Book Depository as the weapon he had seen at the rifle range, but said
that the telescopic sight was not the same. (10H 396) Finally, he volunteered
that he had looked at his neighbor's target at the rifle range and that the
man was "the most accurate of all." (10H 397)

There is no reason to question the credibility of this thirteen-year-old boy,
and it is gratifying that the Commission did not do so. What the Commission did
was to obfuscate his story, lumping him together with the other witnesses, and
then dismissing them all. Only when the full testimony is examined does it
become obvious that the Woods' story does not suffer from the same weakness
as the others and that the man they saw must have been Oswald's double if not
Oswald himself.

If the Commission had accepted the Woods' testimony, it would have
helped to corroborate its thesis of Oswald's marksmanship—a thesis which,
as it stands, has been the subject of much justified criticism. On the other
hand, it would have introduced an unknown friend who was driving Oswald
to target practice.

If the Commission had accepted the Woods' testimony, it might have
lengthened the shadow of an unknown accomplice or of a man deliberately
engaged in impersonating Oswald. (Vintage Book Edition, 1992 reprint of
1967 edition, p. 371)

The Woods are the kinds of solid, credible witnesses that prosecutors dream of. But, nope, the WC had to reject them because the real Oswald could not have been at the Sports Drome when the Woods saw a man there who looked just like Oswald. We now know that the WC was aware of the possibility that Oswald was being impersonated, but they rejected all evidence of impersonations and ignored the issue.

[Benjamin Cole]

MTG--

Thanks for your collegial replies.

BTW, there are Youtubes of gun enthusiasts shooting M-C's with good results. As war surplus, there was probably some variation in the quality of rifles, post-war on the market.

Give the relatively short range at which JFK was shot, my guess is the M-C could have been used.

We have the additional problem of Secret Service agent Paul Landis saying he found a slug, which looked like the large CE-399 slug, in the JFK limo. If Landis is speaking the truth, that strongly suggests the M-C rifle was used in the assassination. In fact, it suggests an undercharged slug from the M-C struck JFK in the upper back.

This does not rule out the use on 11/22 of another rifle (from the Dal-Tex building), or the use of rifles with silencers.

Due to multiple earwitnesses, some relatively deep within the TSBD, I think we can say with a high degree of confidence that three loud audible shots were heard inside the TSBD on 11/22. I contend that means there were three shots fired from TSBD6, almost certainly from the sniper window.

LHO is invisible during the JFKA, but remains the prime suspect as one of the shooters.

What is interesting is that there may have been three wild missed shots during the JFKA. (Tague, the Elm St. manhole cover and the asphalt behind the limo). Maybe that was LHO shooting to miss, a replay of his Walker expedition.

IMHO, the JFKA makes more sense with LHO as a participant, unwitting or otherwise, rather than totally innocent.

LHO's immediate post-JFKA behavior is that of a complicit party, or one who quickly, within moments, deduced he had been framed. That suggest he was part of the JFKA plot.

IMHO, caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

[Tim Nickerson]

We have the additional problem of Secret Service agent Paul Landis saying he found a slug, which looked like the large CE-399 slug, in the JFK limo. If Landis is speaking the truth, that strongly suggests the M-C rifle was used in the assassination. In fact, it suggests an undercharged slug from the M-C struck JFK in the upper back

Landis is not speaking the truth.

https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/did-paul-landis-really-find-a-bullet