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Comment by adam12 | Hacker News Reader

> A weird dude acting alone seems entirely plausible and not surprising historically.

*A weird dude that could break the laws of physics with 3 bullets and a rifle.

The "Magic Bullet" people seem to be running off of incorrect assumptions about how the shot was laid out and how the car was designed. If you take the actual angle of the shot and the actual layout of the presidential car (which did not have normal seating arrangement!) the "crazy" bullet path devolves into a straight shot.

Hell, even early 2000s Discovery channel was able to figure this out!

This is the video where Discovery Channel recreated the shooting. (I have no opinion on it's accuracy.)

https://youtu.be/mODFnl8e83M

CBS and Dan Rather successfully reproduced the shooting by putting marksmen on a tower of the same height, firing at a moving target with the same rifle. Several hit with two bullets; one hit with three bullets. All fired three rounds within six seconds.

Video of their tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs

Regarding the "magic bullet", PBS showed how the path lines up when you correctly locate Connelly in the jump seat, which was lower and offset, turn Connelly slightly in his seat, and have JFK leaning forward a bit, as he was known to do because of back pain. The magic bullet trajectory isn't very magical.

From this episode of Nova, IIRC: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/cold-case-jfk/

The path of the bullet isn't the most eyebrow raising to me because bullets take some wonky paths when they collide with bodies. What's a bit concerning is after taking that wonky path, hitting ribs and wrist bones, the bullet came out practically un-deformed and in relatively pristine condition.

The most plausible explanation I've heard is that after going through JFK's neck and most of Connally's chest without striking bone, it was significantly slowed down so that when it hit Connally's rib and wrist, it was with less than full force so the copper jacket held up better. Warren Commission tests on comparable bullets showed them staying relatively intact even when striking solid wood.

This is a situation, I think, where people's intuitions don't line up well the reality of full metal jacket ammunition, which by design is supposed to deform or fragment less than softer slugs.

I think that's a reasonable enough explanation to change my mind.

I'm no expert, but I thought a bullet deforms due to hydraulic pressure, not necessarily due to contacting a rigid object like a bone.

Are you possibly confusing it with the concept of hydrostatic shock which is more about the wound channel irrespective of bullet deformation?

My favorite theory is that the killing blow was actually done by the secret service, but not because they had a grand scheme to kill him and blame all on Lee, but because the senior members of the SC were hangover and gave rifle duty to a junior that had just completed training. During the commotion of the first shots, he accidentally fired from the second vehicle when it accelerated and killed the US president.

It wasn't really pristine though, its was quite bent along its length. Probably hit bone sideways, etc.

The images I saw didn’t look deformed at all, but maybe they were not at the best angle

It doesn't look bent much at all (maybe we're talking about different rounds)

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/images/ce-399-bu...

3 shots in anywhere from 8-19 seconds depending on who you ask. Either way it's doable. Not really that physics bending.

I don't know that "doable" is exactly the right adjective. 3 shots from a bolt action rifle at a moving target ~260 feet away, with 2 of the 3 shots on target. It's not impossible in that timeframe, but it's not easy either.

As I described above with my link to the video of CBS, in 1967, testing the difficulty of those shots, they had multiple marksmen hit with two shots, and one hit all three, firing the same rifle from the same height at a moving target, within six seconds. It really wasn't that difficult for a practiced shooter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs

That matches what I was saying, in my opinion. We were shown their best performances, and they were experts with recent practice. The test was also a bit easier than the real-life scenario to me. No other occupants, the real car does change speed a couple of times, etc. It's possible, but you would have to assume Oswald kept his skills pretty current. The Marines have 3 levels of high proficiency for marksmen. In his prime, Oswald hit the mid level once, and the lowest level once.

Edit: I can see I'm in the minority here, but I still feel this way. The Marines didn't even test with moving targets until very recently. It's possible, but it does require above-average and recently used skill. If it were trivial, all 3 of the testers would have gone 3/3 on all their runs (only the best runs were shown). Only 1 of the 3 made all three shots.

Former competitive shooter here. This is easy, nearly any bolt action rifle resting on something is incredibly accurate. And this is not a long shot - that would be 600 yards and up. And still possible at that range.

To understand why people find this unremarkable consider the record sniper shot is 11,000+ feet and someone thought the odds where good enough to make the attempt at those ranges. This is a worse gun and worse marksman but under 1/40th that distance. As to timing they get as long as they like to make the first shot and make two more in ~8 seconds one of which can miss.

It’s both fairly pedestrian and nobody would be talking about it today if he had missed all three. 4 presidents out of 44 where successfully assassinated in office. Ronald Reagan was shot and suffered a punctured lung, but survived.

Andrew Jackson survived an attempt due to a misfire. Gerald Ford was similarly fortunate as the assassin’s gun failed to fire.

Franklin Roosevelt was shot at but only a bystander died, Harry Truman pardoned an assassin who stormed where he was staying.

Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning for reelection but wasn’t the current president at the time. He was hit, but the bullet first hit his eyeglass case and his speech so he survived.

That’s 9 attempts serious enough made history, and presumably several others failed earlier.

A much, much, much worse rifle, scope and marksman, in a much higher stress situation.

A human sized target at those distances make the rifle and scope practically irrelevant. People can reliably do longer distance shots at targets that size with a hand handgun.

It takes some skill, but nowhere near what would qualify as a serious marksmen. According to the US army the average soldier can hit a man sized target at 900 feet about 10% of while at 300 feet it’s closer to 50/50 which is roughly where 2 out of 3 shots puts him. People talk about the car being a moving target but people where beside the car, it was barely moving.

Another thing worth considering is just general probability. Was he likely to hit that on the first try, vs ever. Eg imagine he had ten attempts to take those three shots. If that raises the possibility he could do it, then it’s worth considering. I’m the grande scheme of things there is some survival bias — there’s plenty of assassination attempts that did NoT work and we hence never talk about them. The Andrew Jackson one in particular blows my mind (what it’s consequences might have been). Anyways just got me thinking.

It is not easy for a random man off the street, but any properly trained sniper could do it while drunk and with one hand tied behind their back.

Not with that rifle. and Not with Oswald, who was apparently a poor shooter based on the army files we have about him. And let's not forget the pristine bullet... surely there's no problem anywhere.

I live in Dallas, walking distance from Dealey Plaza, have been up to the sixth floor plenty of times, and have fired similar rifles. There are often Xs on the street marking where he was hit you can see from up there. It's my opinion that those were really not difficult shots for a moderately accomplished marksman, certainly not the impossibility that the Oliver Stone movie made it look like. Moving target, but it was moving at a slow and constant speed.

As far as Oswald's service records show, he wasn't great, but wasn't bad. I guess there's no way to know how much he practiced afterward.

That’s pretty straightforward for anyone with some experience behind a bolt gun.

This is a similar (I think slower) pace than you'd see at CMP bolt gun matches. It's typical for even average participants to at least get all the rounds on target.

Trajectories matter. And the shot from that angle is the least likely to hit the car. From where Oswald was supposed to be located a frontal hit before the car turns around the book repository would be the best shot. Makes no sense. Also, you would be ignoring dozens of witness testimonies that mentioned that they heard shots coming from other places. But sure, believe what you want.

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