Firing Range
During his Marine Corps service in December 1956, Oswald scored a rating of sharpshooter (twice achieving 48 and 49 out of 50 shots during rapid fire at a stationary target 200 yards away using a standard issue M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle), although in May 1959, he qualified as a marksman (a lower classification than that of sharpshooter). Military experts, after examining his records, characterized his firearms proficiency as "above average" and said he was, when compared to American civilian males of his age, "an excellent shot".
However, Nelson Delgado, a Marine in the same unit as Oswald, used to laugh at Oswald's shooting prowess and testified that Oswald often got "Maggie's drawers"; meaning a red flag that is waved from the rifle pits to indicate a complete miss of the target during qualification firing. He also said that Oswald did not seem to care if he missed or not. Delgado was first stationed with Oswald in Santa Ana, California at the beginning of 1958 meeting him for the first time there and a little more than a year after Oswald first made sharpshooter.
Skeptics have argued that expert marksmen could not duplicate Oswald's alleged feat in their first try during re-enactments by the Warren Commission (1964) and CBS (1967). In those tests the marksmen attempted to hit the target three times within 5.6 seconds. This time span has been heavily disputed. The Warren Commission itself estimated that the time span between the two shots that hit President Kennedy was 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. If the second shot missed (assuming the first and third shots hit the president), then 4.8 to 5.6 seconds was the total time span of the shots. If the first or third shot missed, that would give a minimum time of 7.1 to 7.9 seconds for the three shots. Modern analysis of a digitally enhanced Zapruder film suggests that the first, second, and final shot may have taken 8.3 seconds.
Many of CBS's 11 volunteer marksmen, who (unlike Oswald) had no prior experience with a properly "sighted" Carcano, were able to hit the test target two times in under the time allowed. The only man who scored three hits was a firearms examiner from Maryland by the name of Howard Donahue.
Read more about this topic: John F. Kennedy Assassination Rifle
Famous quotes containing the words firing and/or range:
“Slowly, and in spite of anything we Americans do or do not do, it looks a little as if you and some other good people are going to have to answer the old question of whether you want to keep your country unshackled by taking even more definite steps to do so—even firing shots—or, on the other hand, submitting to be shackled for the sake of not losing one American life.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The ideal of the self-sufficient American family is a myth, dangerous because most families, especially affluent families, do in fact make use of a range of services to survive. Families needing one or another kind of help are not morally deficient; most families do need assistance at one time or another.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)