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rebbel's avatar

When I was playing Cowboys and Indians, with my neighborhood friends, in the seventies, all our bullets and arrows hit their target. So I, until now, never really questioned the aiming a problem. Here's my question >>?

Asked by rebbel (35553points) February 13th, 2022

How unbelievably good a shot must the murderer of John F. Kennedy have been.
Succeeding a head shot, from great distance, on a moving target, in a moving vehicle.
I came to this question this evening, after I saw images of the motorcade turning onto that last road where he got killed.

Does the potential impossibility, or seemingly difficulty of such a feat give way to another way of killing the president?

What say you?

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18 Answers

Forever_Free's avatar

The single-bullet theory is fascinating to me. Let alone the accuracy. Thank goodness for the Zapruder Film. It still leaves questions.

I am certain there have been many Cowboy and indian like shots fired from many a finger at many a president or person. I think the precautions now are far to great for it to happen again in the US

janbb's avatar

Snipers are pretty well trained to hit a moving target from a great distance.

chyna's avatar

@janbb I wonder if they had that great of technology back in the 60’s?

Dutchess_III's avatar

It’s not the technology. It’s a skilled marksman.

SEKA's avatar

There was one conspiracy theory that George HW Bush who had once been the head of the CIA sent a crack team of hit men to take care of the problem. If one missed, there would be a backup to get it done.

filmfann's avatar

@SEKA GBWBush was there.

ragingloli's avatar

According to this diagram:
https://www.frontiersin.org/files/Articles/763432/fpsyg-12-763432-HTML-r1/image_m/fpsyg-12-763432-g001.jpg
The target was mostly moving away from the shooter with almost no lateral relative motion.
Coupled with the relatively short distance of a little over 70 metres, and a very predictable target vector, it does not seem like a too diffiicult shot to take.

Take this video for reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StQ_AcgCnag
Their easiest target is at almost twice the distance as Kennedy was, and such a shot, with iron sights no less, is trivial to them.

kritiper's avatar

Someone said they saw a shooter on the railroad bridge that was ahead of the motorcade. And what I know of the effects of bullet strikes, and the film, I believe the shooter was in front.
The idea that Oswald (a right handed shooter) could fire accurately from a constantly changing position and angle seems to me to be almost impossible.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Hunters do it all the time. Especially hungry hunters.

kritiper's avatar

@Dutchess_III Hunters don’t always shoot at moving targets.

JLoon's avatar

This took place way, way before my time. But even almost 60 years later it’s still feeding conspiracy theories.

And the reason is that people still can’t believe it could ever be that easy for a random loser with no friends and a $14 rifle to take out the Leader of the Free World in broad daylight in front of 35 Secret Service agents and over 200 Dallas police.

But that’s exactly what happened. No magic bullet, no impossible shot, no elite team of foreign assassins – Just carelessness, tragedy, and fate.

Nomore_Tantrums's avatar

@JLoon I agree. And THAT is the biggest whackadoodle theory of them all. That, “Come on people, that just couldn’t have happened”. But it could and it did. Random fate and sheer incompetence.

LadyMarissa's avatar

We were sold one of the biggest packages of BS that our government ever put on the table.
But it could and it did.
Then WHY won’t they release the reports proving that it “could & it did”???

I don’t prescribe to any of the conspiracy theories; but at the same time, I don’t believe the crap they passed out as fact to be anymore factual than most of the conspiracy theories!!!

Nomore_Tantrums's avatar

Because it would display for the world to see, all of their gross incompetence. Better the world thinks it was some shadowy conspiracy than to know the truth. Little tidbits like how his Secret Service detail was our drinking until 4 AM the night before the assassination. Or how the Government knew that Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union and his wife’s uncle was a KGB agent. Stay tuned.

JLoon's avatar

I’m not here to argue with anyone who has their mind made up, one way or another.

But as far as “not releasing reports” or “covering up”; Congress enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act in 1992. The Act mandated that all assassination-related material be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The resulting Collection consists of more than 5 million pages of assassination-related records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts (approximately 2,000 cubic feet of records). Most of the records are open for research.

The National Archives is continuing to release documents previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Act. The vast majority of the Collection (88%) has been open in full and released to the public since the late 1990s.

JFK Assassination Records – 2021 Additional Documents Release | National Archives:
https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/release2021

“You can access individual files by browsing the webpage above and selecting the link in the “Record Number” column. If you need copies of all PDF files, you can request a compressed bulk download by emailing bulkdownload@nara.gov with “JFK Bulk Download” in the subject line.

Some documents are still redacted for security reasons, and roughly 14,000 pages are still unreleased. But with more than 5 million pages already public, it’s not hard to see for yourself what the information is, and why most investigators still agree that Oswald acted alone.

Dutchess_III's avatar

^^^ I love this girl.

JLoon's avatar

@Dutchess_III – Loon hug ((x))

Dutchess_III's avatar

♡♡♡♡

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