Oswald qualified as a Marine sharpshooter. It is my belief, and mine only perhaps the scope played no role in the assassination. Oswald likely new the sites provided him with more accuracy and the final head shot at 88 yards on a downward trajectory was not terribly difficult for a sharpshooter. Yet, this is but one piece of the puzzle. I for one don?t look at only one piece. I?ve examined the totality of ALL the evidence assembled. Unfortunately, many CT?s, I?m not saying you, examine ?evidence? to confirm their own biased theory at the expense of understanding Oswald and who and what he represented.
Not your belief alone. I agree, the iron sights were probably used by Oswald.
The company that sold the rifles testified that the scope was not zero sighted. It was just slapped on the rifle. For an extra cost of only about $ 5.00, they would be losing money with every sale if they zero sighted the scopes.
And why would a company executive testify that their product was worse than it really was? It would serve no purpose if they were just trying to implicate Oswald. If that was the case, they would say the scopes were sighted.
Oswald was trained in the Marines to use iron sights. He never was trained to use a scope. As far as we know he never had used a rifle with a scope before he got that rifle.
Oswald was trained to hit targets at 200 yards, 300 yards and 500 yards. And he was pretty good at it. He qualified as a sharpshooter, something most Marines were not about to do. He should be able to hit a person at 88 yards, the longest shot taken on November 22?
Why order a rifle with a scope? Why keep the scope once he discovered (from practice shots or missing General Walker) it was not zero sighted and not useful for aiming?
A possible reason is because he thought it looked cool. It looked like the weapon of a dangerous assassin. He might like to keep the scope on for the same reason he wanted to be photographed with the rifle wearing black. And take time to put on the same black sweater before appearing before the world press, and Jack Ruby. It is not always wise to be overly focused on image.
And he was a dangerous assassin. With an M-1 at 200, 300 and 500 yards at a stationary target. Or I would guess a Carcano at 200 yards at a stationary target. And even a moving target, with a Carcano, provided it was under 100 yards away and moving mostly directly away from him at 8 mph.
Curiously, the WC commission, most investigations and to this day, most LNers believe (I think) that the scope was probably used. This is the most significant error on the LN side.
