I'm sure Greg is an intelligent and hardworking guy who is kind to stray dogs, but in my opinion his ideas on virtually every issue are indeed lunatic fringe stuff.

Good grief Lance, what are you on about? You are the first and only person to my knowledge that has ever accused me of being lunatic fringe. I've said some stupid things, may be wrong on some things, but you're just out of line and I don't think you know what you are talking about.

"on virtually every issue"? Wow.

Do you mean my defense of Ruth Paine? In which I argued the shocking idea that one possible interpretation of a woman for whom no proof has ever been shown in her entire life of criminal wrongdoing or any proof of the suspicions against her might conceivably be because she is innocent? Of the vast quantity of attacks and defamations of her from the conspiracy community, to its utter and deep shame? I knew Ruth Paine and I'm serious on this. Yes it goes against majority thinking (among readers of JFK forums), but does that make it lunatic fringe? Or a minority dissenting argument? My major paper on Ruth Paine, https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1686

Do you mean my argument that Dallas businesswoman Edith Whitworth at the Furniture Mart really saw Oswald and Marina in her store on the morning of Nov 11, 1963, Veterans Day, with Lee inquiring where to find a gunsmith? This is another minority opinion, but anyone who reads the paper can see it's not lunatic fringe territory, whether one agrees or disagrees. I admit the theoretical possibility that I could be wrong (I don't think so on this one though) but that is not what lunatic fringe makes. Here's that paper: https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1450 .

Do you mean the companion paper I wrote to that, in which I argued that Oswald next went down the street to the Irving Sport Shop and had Dial Ryder there reinstall the scope back on the Mannlicher-Carcano? Don't kneejerk opinions based on surface reaction to the conclusion; read the argument and see this is not lunatic fringe territory in the least. Here's that paper, https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1485 .

Do you mean my original first effort in the JFKA area, my interview with John Curington (the late HL Hunt aide), and comments in my footnotes and introduction there? No one else other than you has ever called that lunatic fringe. Most have found it highly interesting. And don't jump to conclusions that I believe everything Curington said. I think you jump to a lot of conclusions without knowing what you are talking about, concerning me. Here's that paper. https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1514.

How about this short piece that Larry Hancock published on his blog, a piece of original research I did on an uninvestigated report of an Oswald aptitude test showing a poor score in motor coordination which the Texas Employment Commission counselor who had that test done on Oswald believed correlated, in her anecdotal experience, with poor rifle markmanship ability, and which she attempted to bring to the attention of the Warren Commission and the FBI, and the FBI refused to investigate it? I broke that story, Larry published it in 2025, and it was missed before. More lunatic fringe there? Here's that one: https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1749

How about the utterly shocking argument I made that the phone call Dean Andrews in New Orleans received regarding legal counsel for the arrested Oswald in Dallas, the weekend of the assassination, did not come from Clay Shaw, but came from Marcello circles via Marguerite Oswald in Dallas seeking a lawyer for her son. Original argument and research through and through in that paper, not everyone will agree, all matters Garrison arouse strong opinions. I'm in the camp negative on Garrison's prosecution methods. Is that lunatic fringe to take a contrarian opinion to the majority CT view favorable to Garrison? Here's my Dean Andrews paper: https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1690

Or do you mean the original research I did developing a first-ever study of the Odell Estes story, making cases for some Dallas-New Orleans mob and Ruby/Carousel Club connections in the summer of 1963 that have not been brought out before? Yes, there is plenty of room for differences of opinion on specifics in this paper because by its nature, the evidence is fragmentary. All I did in that paper is to make cases for some things. Is there anything in this paper that is "lunatic fringe"? https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1710 .

I have no track record of "lunatic fringe" in any non-JFKA area that anyone has accused me of. Nobody I've ever heard of thinks I'm lunatic fringe except your name-calling. What is the bee in your bonnet here? You have repeated this a few times, and its just off the wall, uncalled-for. I've always treated you respectfully to my knowledge. How would you like to have someone say "virtually every issue" you say anything about is "lunatic fringe"?

I have done quite a bit of reading and research on studies of the conspiracy-theory phenomenon, current research on it. Don't think you are the only one who has.

I have just a bit of conceptual difficulty with a shot that misses everything followed by two longer shots that are pretty much right on the money.

Here's a possible explanation that you might not have thought of....

Oswald's Carcano rifle, per the FBI's firearms expert Robert Frazier, fired bullets high and to the right when using the 4-power scope. [See Frazier's Warren Commission testimony, at 3 H 404-405.]

If this was also the case when Oswald was shooting at JFK on November 22, and Oswald for some reason forgot this quirk about his scope when he squeezed off his first shot that day (if he used the scope at all, which is also debatable, of course), that could be at least a partial explanation as to why his first shot missed and (possibly) struck the nearby oak tree, a tree that would have been to Oswald's RIGHT if he was aiming a little to the tree's left through the scope just as JFK's car was nearing it from LHO's point-of-view (as illustrated in CE888 and CE875).

The Bottom Line (concerning the "missed shot"):

Nobody can know for certain what happened to that bullet. And nobody can know for certain whether the "oak tree" theory is accurate or not.

But, given the overall evidence (which certainly indicates that three shots and only three shots were fired during the assassination, with all three of those shots coming from Oswald's Sniper's Nest in the TSBD and from Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, with two of those three bullets striking the victims in the limousine), I think the best guess re: the one missed shot is that that bullet did, indeed, hit the oak tree (which is a tree that was located to the RIGHT of Oswald at the time he fired that shot at approx. Z160, which fits in pretty well with a misaligned scope that might very well have been aiming "HIGH AND TO THE RIGHT" during the shooting, although that's another thing we'll never know for sure; it's quite possible that the scope became misaligned when Oswald dropped the gun amongst the boxes after the assassination).

More:
https://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/07/missed-shot-controversy.html

If there was evidence of a first missed shot, I would have to conclude that, for whatever reason, he made it. But there isn’t.

Yes, there is.

As captured in the Zapruder film, at least seven prime witnesses to the sounds of Oswald's first, missing-everything, shot at "Z-124" moved their heads in conscious non-startle ways within half-a-second of each other about a second after said shot, and those witnesses included everyone in the limo except for the hard-to-see driver.

Governor Connally recognized the sounds as coming from a high-powered rifle and turned far to his right starting around Z-164 (after having turned to his left) in order to look towards the rear where he knew the shot had come from.

No problem, Tom. I strongly disagree with at least half of my own posts!  In fact, when someone here appeared to have created sock puppets to agree with his posts, I suggested it would be way more fun and interesting to create a sock puppet who violently disagreed with your posts.

What I notice recently is that I will type a word completely different from the word I intended to type. On one post today, I meant to type "joined" and typed "enjoyed." My brain and memory still seem to be hitting on all cylinders, but it is quite weird and unnerving.

That is surprising about Jean, but I don't know enough about the RFK-Dulles stuff to comment. (My paternal grandmother was a fabulously wealthy Kansas City socialite who knew the Dulles family. More accurately, to quote my father (her son), she was a "good-looking slut" who had him at 16 - in 1908 - and then married into fabulous Kansas City wealth in the form of an industrialist named Lester T. Sunderland.)

Lance, thank you. I have high confidence that this is the woman you described. She was 16 during part of 1908. I'll delete this link if you prefer.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/190262426/sara_p-simmons

I took Jean's challenge by purchasing a used copy of Willie Morris's book, snapped a shot of the page with the God quote and I shared the image of the page with her :
https://1drv.ms/i/c/fe47b6f7a749f492/IQDyAGiDenHcQ66Pmhrou1TFAdwWkTdkwfy90-qhMTIA-X8?e=2WFeLf

That argument works against your theory. Since Oswald had done much shooting he would have recognized that an early shot was not only difficult to make but would make quickly getting into position for any later shots much more difficult. So not only do you have zero evidence for an early missed shot, you have just explained why Oswald would not have made it.

You're assuming that the killer of JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a rational person.