JFK Assassination Forum

So Oswald using a fake alias name he had used in the USSR and listing that name as an alternate for his own real name P.O. Box and mail ordering a rifle using that fake name and listing that P.O. Box as the address to  send the rifle…was because …

A.He was naturally as Stupid as a box of rocks
B.He was aware of how stupid he was acting but he did not care because he was having marriage problems with Marina even before he became fixated on Walker. It was Oswald’s attempt to shock Marina into paying attention to him.
C. He was mentally disturbed from all the way back to his childhood and so it’s not unexpected that he could be this stupid.
D. He was a schizophrenic and Alek Hidell was his other personality.

There, I think that about covers the LN possible reasons for what appears to be incredibly stupid decisions made by Oswald.

Now any CTs still on this forum, please feel free to criticize those above listed reasons and list some alternative possibilities that are more plausible.

You haven't even begun to scratch the surface for possible reasons Oswald used an alias to order the rifle. It might be a reason neither you nor I have even thought of. Oswald's mind was a lock box which nobody has the key for. It we knew Oswald's reasons for what he did, it might make perfect sense to us or it might make no sense at all. That's why I think it is a futile exercise trying to figure out why Oswald did anything. My focus is on what I know he did. That's a fairly straight forward exercise. I never will understand why some people think it is necessary to figure out why Oswald did something in order to know that he did something.

EUREKA!  This cop was the one who probably saw where the bullet that struck the manhole cover had buried into the grass and was going there to pick up that bullet lest it be discovered and found be a 7.65 bullet.

He was carrying the black flashlight ready to be used as a signaling device to signal the 2nd gunmans hit so he wouldn’t fire again and to recover any missed shot by this gunman because this gunman was using a different caliber bullet than the TSBD conspirator shooter trying to use the MC rifle that had been mail ordered to set up Oswald or had been stolen from Oswald.

So Oswald using a fake alias name he had used in the USSR and listing that name as an alternate for his own real name P.O. Box and mail ordering a rifle using that fake name and listing that P.O. Box as the address to  send the rifle…was because …

A.He was naturally as Stupid as a box of rocks
B.He was aware of how stupid he was acting but he did not care because he was having marriage problems with Marina even before he became fixated on Walker. It was Oswald’s attempt to shock Marina into paying attention to him.
C. He was mentally disturbed from all the way back to his childhood and so it’s not unexpected that he could be this stupid.
D. He was a schizophrenic and Alek Hidell was his other personality.

There, I think that about covers the LN possible reasons for what appears to be incredibly stupid decisions made by Oswald.

Now any CTs still on this forum, please feel free to criticize those above listed reasons and list some alternative possibilities that are more plausible.

All I know is that in Arizona, and I'm sure in Texas, half the ads in the sporting goods classifeid section of the newspaper were for guns. Buying a gun was no more complex than having the cash and meeting the seller at a mutually convenient location. Almost 15 years after the JFKA, I bought a pristine Remington 30-06 with a very nice 4X Weaver scope for $75. I had no idea who the seller was, he had no idea who I was, no questions asked. In the space of 24 hours before the assassination, Oswald could have had his hands on a far more plausible assassination rifle, completely untraceable to him. It would be interesting to look at the classified sections of the Dallas newspapers for the couple of days before the JFKA.

That's just a partial list. He was a bad man who made decisions on his own. He had free will.

Philosophically, "free will" is far from a simple concept, complex enough that even the existence of free will is hotly debated in both philosophy and science. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

For purposes of the criminal justice system, we at least have to pretend it exists or no one would be held accountable for anything. However, the insanity defense - which used to require the defendant to be a "wild animal" (the actual terminology) who couldn't understand right from wrong - has now been so watered down that it sometimes seems we are on the verge of no one being held accountable for anything. (There is an interesting question: What psychological defenses would be argued if Oswald were tried today?)

To have empathy for Oswald doesn't require one to think he was a good guy. Empathy is "the ability to understand, share, and recognize the feelings and perspectives of another person." I think I can do this to a large extent with Oswald without thinking he was a good guy. As stated, he was intelligent and idealistic. He could have been steered in positive directions. Ernst Titovets and George de Mohrenschildt, neither of whom was an uncultured dummy, enjoyed his company. But he went off the rails. Some of it was undoubtedly his genetic predisposition, some of it was poverty and circumstances, some of it anger and frustration at his circumstances, some of it just poor choices on his part. This is why it is so difficult to articulate a plausible reason why he would have killed JFK.

Empathy is in the vein of the old saying "There but for the grace of God goes I." Put me in the exact circumstances of Oswald, and I'm not sure I would have turned out much different - possibly not murdering JFK, but easily drifting into pretty serious crime and antisocial behavior.

The venom spewed toward Oswald by people like John is simply beyond me. To be a good little LN soldier, am I required to hate Oswald with every fiber of my being?

It seems to me there is predisposition to make Oswald far more of an "evil monster" than he was because it makes it easier to fit him into the LN narrative. The actual Oswald may fit, but not so easily.

Can you cite another case in which an individual was given separate trials for two murders committed a short time apart and in close proximity to each other. I'm not pretending to be a lawyer here. I've just never heard of such a case. I'm going from memory hear, but I believe Charles Manson and family were given a single trial for the the Tate and Labianca murders committed on separate nights. I didn't remember this but when I looked it up there were two other murders committed the previous month that Manson and his family were tried and convicted for. The spree has usually been called the Tate-Labianca  murders, ignoring the first two victims.

It's impossible to really say. OJ was tried for both murders, but they were at the same scene at the same time. I would think that in Oswald's case if he were tried for JFK first the judge would allow evidence up to and including his visit to the room on Beckley and getting his revolver, as well as his arrest in the theater. Overlapping the two cases would be highly prejudicial to Oswald in the JFK case unless he had been convicted of the Tippit murder. I believe a judge would be extremely careful about not allowing that to happen. The most straightforward way would be to try him for Tippit first. AI agrees with me, which i'm not sure I should find comforting: "Under Texas criminal procedure, a defendant must be tried separately for each distinct, unrelated offense unless the charges stem from the exact same criminal act (e.g., a single bomb that kills two people). Because the Tippit shooting and the Kennedy assassination were two separate events involving different victims at different locations, they would have required two distinct trials."

Like it or not, the criminal justice system exists to protect the accused. The deck is heavily stacked in favor of the accused in almost every way. In the hands of a really skillful criminal defense team, Oswald's trial likely would have looked far different from how most LNers picture it looking - and the outcome, IMO, would have been far less certain.