BOOK REVIEW -- "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY" - Page 8

Re: BOOK REVIEW -- "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY"

Actually the only question I have is why LHO stopped at three rounds. The Carcano magazine holds six rounds.


Wouldn't he have kept firing in order to stir up as much trouble as possible?

Re: BOOK REVIEW -- "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY"

??? He had just killed the president of the United States in broad daylight in front of many hundreds of witnesses. How much more "trouble" could he have stirred up? And how? Shooting a few random civilians? Killing Nellie and Jackie? Shooting some street signs or traffic lights?

Besides, his objective wasn't to "stir up trouble". It was to kill the president. Once he had done that (and there couldn't have been much doubt that the third shot was fatal, what with the skull fragments, blood and brain matter flying all over the place) there was no reason to continue firing.

Oswald wasn't a trained sniper, but he saw himself in that role. Any sniper tries to take out the target with the fewest possible shots. The ideal is "one shot, one kill." If he'd killed JFK with his first shot he would have been delighted and he certainly would not have fired a second shot. It isn't like the president would have been any deader for being shot again.

OTOH he had an excellent reason to stop shooting: his desire to escape if possible. The longer he stayed there firing, the more likely that someone was going to figure out where the shots were coming from, and the less chance he had of getting away.

Regards,

Joe

Re: BOOK REVIEW -- "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY"

I don't know Joe.

I would think a few random shots into the thickest parts of the crowd would have created such panic that it would be arguable easier to have escaped into the crowd.

Re: BOOK REVIEW -- "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY"

Shots into the crowd would do nothing but disperse the crowd, causing them to seek cover. If you were a law enforcement officer, what would you think of a man strolling out of the TSBD and walking down the street amongst these "pinned down" citizens?

Besides, this assumes that Oswald was thinking of anything except killing the President and getting as far away as possible. Remember, the man was loco.

Re: BOOK REVIEW -- "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY"

Have you seen the film footage of the immediate aftermath of the shooting?

Blowing a big part of the president's head off caused plenty of panic as it was. Nobody knew where the shots were coming from (the plaza is an echo chamber, which is one reason people were confused over both the direction and number of shots) or if there would be more coming. Even if Oswald had had more ammo, dropping a couple of random people in the crowd would have made little or no difference.

Given the layout of the plaza and how widely the people were dispersed, very few people would have seen any individual being shot and falling. All eyes were on the motorcade. A few people standing in the immediate area of another victim would have reacted, but people across the street or on the other side of the plaza would never have known that anything had happened. I don't think there would have been any signficant difference in the crowd reaction if there were a couple of extra shots, but agree that if there had been it would have leaned in the direction of dispersing the crowd and hindering Oswald's escape.

Either way I don't think there was anything to be gained from pumping a few more rounds out that would compensate for keeping Oswald in the sniper's next for another 8 to 10 seconds and giving witnesses three more shots to help them zero in on his location.

Regards,

Joe

Re: BOOK REVIEW -- "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY"

The model 1891/38 Carcano was the standard infantry rifle of Italian troops in WWII. Many were lost in the Italian defeats in East and North Africa. Most of the ones available for purchase in recent years (e.g. my own) came out of storage in Albania, which was an occupied Italian client state back circa 1940.

It's harder to find ammo for Carcanos these days, and it's odd that there isn't any cheap Albanian ammo for sale. Albania was a Chi Com client state -their toehold in Europe - and the Chinese built a huge ammo factory in Albania which produced far in excess of any legitimate Albanian need. But their production was 7.62 x 54R ammo for the Russian Mosin-Nagant, not any Carcano ammo as far I as know. IIRC LHO's ammo was American built stuff, the legacy of the CIA getting ammo to supply along with Carcanos to insurgents in the Balkans. I guess they thought the Carcanos would be untraceable to them since they were a "native" military rifle in that part of the world.

It's unclear to me how much postwar Carcano ammo was produced in Italy. The NATO countries quickly adopted the .308 Winchester round as a standard for all member nations, renaming it the .308 NATO.

Here's one store that stocks Carcano ammo. Graf & Sons - 6.5x52 Carcano The Privi Partisan cheaper stuff comes out of Serbia. I should go order some since my Italian surplus stuff is in poor and dirty condition - I've never fired any because of my concerns about its safety. Surprisingly enough the magazine clips themselves are easy to get. Someone in the US has been producing them and I got a handful for $5 mailorder not that long ago from Discount Hunting Gear, Discount Hunting Boots, Discount Shoes, Discount Ammunition, Discount Ammo, Discount Boots, Military Surplus, Outdoor Gear At the Sportsman's Guide .

I guess my long winded post is about how Carcano ammo is still available although not cheap. If it's available 66 years after the Italian surrender, it would surely have been much more available in the 1950's and 1960's.

Well, David - as usual, I can't argue with anything you said in those last two posts. 

Keep up the good work,

Joe