One of these days, maybe some new info will emerge that makes it plausible that the MC rifle was post event planted or switched for another rifle found.
The best I’ve been able to speculate is possible window of opportunity of an MC rifle found at Oswalds boarding room at 1:30 pm and it being immediately transported to the TSBD and up to 6th floor and placed or swapped at the boxes closest to staircase by 1:40pm.
This based on Tom Aleya statements referring to Lt. Day not arriving on the 6th floor until 18 minutes AFTER the “Mauser” rifle was discovered by Boone and Wietzman at 1:22 pm.
Otherwise it would have to be pre planted and that’s a problem also as to why would a rifle be planted with unusable scope and corrosion.
Besides Walt Cakebreads theory of an elaborate hoax to fool Oswald, the only other theory offered Is that Oswald did have an MC rifle and had recently moved it from Paines garage ( leaving behind in the garage a flat blanket roiled up with strings still tied around it) in Oct. 63.
Someone knew of that and the set up of Oswald begins by luring him away from the boarding house to visit his wife on Thursday , with a false message phone call that Marina wished to reconcile their marriage.
So the reason for a rifle to have misaligned and malfunction scope and corrosion in barrel, was possibly because conspirator thief was unaware of the scope problem nor of the corrosion in the barrel,
I’ve also considered Walts theory could be partly correct in that the rifle WAS preplanted but for another reason such as the conspirators are fellow ex CIA of which Oswald may have at one time been involved with ( Sylvia Odeo and Loran Hall etc?).
