I'm beginning to think the endless speculation as to how long Oswald had to fire the shots is pretty much a red herring. Ben Cole posted somewhere - perhaps here - several YouTube videos of guys firing a Carcano with absolutely jaw-dropping rapidity.
What is NOT a red herring, it seems to me, is the number of really solid witnesses who described the second and third shots as nearly simultaneous. There is an old (2010) thread at the Ed Forum on this subject,
https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/16384-shot-sequence-descriptions/, where Pat Speer summarizes his meticulous research thusly (and I believe accurately):
Chapters 5 through 9 at patspeer.com are devoted to the eyewitness evidence, and show how the eyewitness statements, when taken as a whole, are quite clear on several points. One is that the first of the three shots heard by most witnesses hit Kennedy. Two is that the last two shots were fired quite close together. Although slightly less clear, a third point was nevertheless surprising – I certainly didn't expect it. The head shot was the FIRST of the last two shots fired closely together, and the second of the three shots heard by most witnesses.When you examine what those witnesses said, "quite close together" is more like REALLY close together - i.e., "on top of each other," "bang bang," "bunched together," etc. It isn't anything like "three or four seconds." It certainly isn't the 4.8 to 5.6 seconds estimated by the WC. Regardless of whether the total sequence was as "long" as ten seconds or as short as six, numerous witnesses pereived the last two shots being noticeably closer together within that sequence.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t see that the WC or HSCA (firearms and acoustics panels) really focused on this issue. The focus seems to have been more on the perceived location and overall timing of the shots but not much on the fact that so many perceived the second and third shots as essentially simultaneous. (I was surprised to be reminded that the WC was actually quite open-minded, conceding the possibility of only two shots and that the three-shot witnesses may have been influenced by media coverage.)
Here’s the famous Lee Bowers interview where he describes the shot sequence beginning at about 5:35, with the second and third being “almost on top of each other.” He’s a good witness because he was physically removed from the immediate reverberations and echoes and whatnot. If he were alone in his description, that would be one thing – but he’s not. As I say … troubling.
The CT community would do itself a big favor if it would focus on these aspects that are genuinely troubling and less on ideologically-driven silliness and supposed plots and cover-ups that are closer to science fiction.
