I watched a few of the television documentaries on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the US president.
There seem to be a lot of conspiracy theories and I found it a little difficult to get my head around it all.
Investigations seem to have been carried out on all the aspects that happened, might have happened or were possible to happen and what I have to say in neither groundbreaking or controversial.
The thing is, I regularly shoot rabbits. Not for the fun of it - just because it the requirement of a land owner to control rabbits.
In New Zealand rabbits are an introduced species and they damage our environment and compete with livestock for food.
So I am a practiced shooter but I am not anywhere near a sharp shooter - as Oswald has been described - but I hit more than I miss. And from time to time I make difficult shots that one might term a fluke - but flukes do happen.
It is difficult to shoot downhill because of the theories of trajectory and the influence of gravity, so you aim lower than you normally would - but it is difficult to make the judgement of how much to allow for.
Myself, I tend not to shoot downhill because I invariably miss.
It is also difficult to shoot at a moving target. It would seem from where Oswald was and the direction of the car, there would have been no need to allow any lead. But regardless of that, the mind would have played tricks.
The scope apparently was a four power, and the pictures I have seen show that it is a small thing to peer through.
As well to be accurate, you need to be calm - I would think Oswald's heart would have been pumping with whatever emotion he was experiencing. Then, he had to work the bolt in the rifle to reload - each time shifting from a comfortable firing position.
I drew a line on the margin of a piece of paper. 1cm from the bottom, I marked 1mm from the perpendicular after 25cm, the gap from the perpendicular is 1.7cm. So obviously if the muzzle of the rifle moved 1mm when Oswald fired, at 70m he would have missed.
Movies and electronic games make us all think that pointing and firing results in hitting.
I was given the DVD of the movie Django. Using open sights from what I would call a 'long distance', he dropped a farmer - moving, ploughing a field. Now such a shot is possible but it is unlikely. As I said - flukes do happen.
So all I am saying about Oswald's shots is that they were remarkable.
Morals don't come into the shooting if Oswald (and or Ruby) was a nutter.
The ease of acquiring firearms seems to me to be ridiculous. It would seem that in the US as many other countries, the justification for owning a firearm is 'self defense'. And that means, basically, you are prepared to shoot someone. That then brings in morals.
Oft said 'politics is a dirty game'. The forces of internal and external politics result in the will of the individual(s) excerpting the the mandate of the people/population.
Whatever the reason a democratically elected President was taken down by remarkable rifle fire.
