The Dallas Police Department examination indicated Lee Harvey Oswald, whom the Warren Commission alleges fired a $26 WWII-vintage Italian carbine, had no powder burns on his chest, arms, or hands.

“Surplus weapons were cheap”. It’s all relative. M14 and Garand were a lot more expensive compared to lesser firearms. Oswald was poor and couldn’t afford a Garand. $19.95 sounds quaint today, but is equivalent to several hundred of the confetti buck dollars today. A single silver dollar has $30 or more melt value. Lots and lots of monetary inflation since 1963

Couple problems with that.

1. Assuming - Stone said powder burns and may have literally meant that.

2. No, not all the gases and residues go down the barrel of a firearm when fired - however, except in the case of very much more powerful cartridges than that of a Carcano, after the firing cycle is complete, the gases in the chamber and barrel aren’t under *that* much pressure. If the operator runs the bolt in anything resembling an energetic fashion, not much residual gas and particulates are going to get out of the chamber. Depending on whether the operator maintains their cheek weld or takes the rifle off their shoulder while cycling the action, the only surfaces to be exposed to those ‘lazy’ residues may be the hand and forearm. Even today, with modern higher sensitivity testing, police forensics do not actually expect to find GSR on the face of someone thought to have been firing a bolt rifle from the shoulder. (They do for an AR-type, though...)

3. The sensitivities of the testing technologies generally available prior to 1990 is such that simply washing your hands or even sweating heavily would remove enough residue that the tests would not detect GSR on your hands.

4. Generally speaking, when firing on an outdoor range, unless there is no wind or unfavorable wind, you’re not going to get the smell in your face. Oswald was not firing from entirely within the building, but was visibly extending the barrel out the window. The prevailing winds in the area would have mostly dispersed the gas cloud outside and not blown it back into the building.

You don’t have much experience with firearms? ... I’m not sure why anyone is so enthusiastic about defending Oswald.

I've fired a rifle or pistol over 100 times in my lifetime. And I don't care about Oswald, one way or another.

Due to the extent the sight was misaligned, it would not have been possible for Oswald to hit his targets with that weapon, even from just 100 meters away.

Again, from the FBI report:

They [the US Army marksmen] could not sight the weapon in using the telescope

Which, unfortunately, does not mean the scope wasn’t working at the time he was shooting. Most scopes of the time were far more delicate than they are now and they were to be carried in a padded case when not in direct or imminent use.

The scope Oswald was using was a extremely cheap Ordnance Optics 4x18 unit, made in Japan and originally intended for a .22. Just as with similar Chinese scopes today, dropping it will break it beyond repair - especially after mounting it on an intermediate or higher power caliber rifle instead of the .22LR it was intended for.

The fact that the US Army could not repair it is not surprising as even the manufacturer was notorious for not being able to fix broken ones. There’s a reason Ordnance Optics is no longer with us.

You don’t get it. I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you. The rifle wasn’t tested for what, 6 months after?

It could easily have been dropped or banged around at any point afterward. That will knock the zero off big time. This is well known to anyone who has messed around with installing and zeroing a scope. After shooting the president, do you envision Oswald carefully hiding the rifle?

Nah, he just chucked it behind some boxes while running back to the cafeteria or whatever. He had no use for the rifle after that.

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