Replies

Oswald's official Marine shooting scores met only the minimal qualification. Those who saw Oswald shoot on various occasions have said that he was an almost comically poor shot. If Oswald somehow later became a skilled shooter, then when and where did he get the necessary training and practice?

Nor was the shooting scenario in Dallas a piece of cake. Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, a great US sniper in Vietnam and later the senior instructor at the Marines Corps Sniper Instruction School at Quantico, flatly said that Oswald could not have done what the Warren Commission said he did.

As Hathcock explained, when they reconstructed the assassination at Quantico: the angle, moving target, time limit etc., “I don’t know how many times we tried it, but we couldn’t duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did."

In fairness, key researchers now seem to conclude that the Warren Commission got the time frame wrong and that Oswald's first shot was early and was deflected by tree branches or a traffic signal support arm. If that is so, then Oswald would have been easily able to fire off two more shots. Yet, if the alternative scenario is accurate, Oswald's skills as a sniper are called into question by the basic mistake that his first and most deliberate shot was into an obstruction.

Moreover, the problem remains that the Warren Commission account has Oswald firing a rifle that was not properly aligned and sighted in. That would not be accepted by a trained and capable sniper, and if it was, his accuracy would be compromised.