And why bother going to the trouble of building a hiding place for the rifle, try to wipe it clean of all prints but leave the empty shells just lying there.
Yes, exactly. Great point. It makes no sense. Here we have a guy supposedly doing the deed up there, lets the shells fly all over the place [and one shell's rim was dented BTW] but takes the time to wipe down the gun and hide it. If there really had been someone up there and they took the shells too, think of the interesting ramifications that would entail about the official narrative. So I've always thought of the throw down shells as being like breadcrumbs for the story.
It reminds me of the Jeff MacDonald case - three strangers go into the home and cause all kinds of havoc on the women in there, leave old Jeff with a scratch, he supposedly fights them off, the coffee table is turned over, but all of the nick knacks on the curio shelf are undisturbed.
As for the gun itself, here's a variant of the rifle. I'm no gun expert but creaky to use. And per Pat Speer looking through the misaligned scope would have caused even more time per shot to look through it and find the target because of the warped view in a scope. He supposedly hit Kennedy in the back, loads, looks through the scope, scores a supposedly wild shot way off and downwind, loads and looks in it again and scores the head shot.
Sure, sure he did.