Once again - your or anyone else's inferences, based on watching the Zapruder film, are neither facts or empirical evidence. They are opinions. They certainly don't prove your contention of a shot fired ~Z-285.
It is easy to see his coat rise above his collar, temporarily hiding it from our view. And it is equally easy to see that he lowered his shoulders when the collar came back into our view.
This has nothing to do with "opinions". It is empiricaly proven fact, just as it is empiricaly proven that he reacted almost exactly like the lady in the Olympic bombing video I linked.
This was by far, the biggest case this man was ever associated with, and people tend to have clear memories of what they did that day. I really don't see any reason to doubt him.
Isn't this the topic that you've been involved with for the last 20 years? It seems very important to you. So important that you see every challenge to your pet hypothesis as an affront to you personally. And yet you got something wrong. Do you see what Hank is trying to get you to see?
This was by far, the biggest case this man was ever associated with, and people tend to have clear memories of what they did that day. I really don't see any reason to doubt him.
After all, the only reasons to doubt him would be that what he says contradicts all the hard evidence and the other testimony that is consistent with it; that his story implies a cover-up starting at the level of local police officers and extending to the media that promulgated images of the Carcano as the found weapon; and that the more plausible explanation is that things could have gotten jumbled in his memory over the years (as the story of the Mauser left by a cop or somebody on the roof got jumbled in my mind with "documented fact"; I haven't been able to trace it back any further—in the time allotted to edit this—than the Free Press reporter who mentioned it to Roger Craig in 1968, thus planting the seed for his later tales about a Mauser being found on the sixth floor.
This has nothing to do with "opinions". It is empiricaly proven fact, just as it is empiricaly proven that he reacted almost exactly like the lady in the Olympic bombing video I linked.
No, that excuse won't work. You were contrasting the Zapruder film with another film, which you claimed erroneously was the Tague film. Did you forget your own claims already?
...I have argued with alterationists who claimed that there is no visible slowdown in the Zapruder film as there is in the Tague film. Of course there is, but that's because in the Tague film, we are looking at a smaller limo in a much larger background.
Clearly, when you referenced the "Tague" film above, you couldn't have meant the "Zapruder" film. You've now established recall is not at good as you would like to argue. Thank you for that.
This was not a case of me forgetting. When I type rapidly sometimes, after dozens of long posts, I sometimes do that. If I type Nellie instead of Jackie, it doesn't mean that I forgot who JFK was married to.
I know. You reached into your memory bank and the filing system brought up the wrong memory. Ellsworth suffers from that too. We all do. Sometimes memories get corrupted. It happens.
By that standard, you can just blow off every witness in existence. This was by far, the biggest case this man was ever associated with, and people tend to have clear memories of what they did that day. I really don't see any reason to doubt him.
Ah, the old "the normal rules don't apply to him" excuse. I see several reasons to doubt him.
1. There's no corroboration for his recollection.
2. His recollection is from decades after the fact.
3. The contemporaneous testimony and memos put the recovered weapon on the same floor as the recovered shells.
4. Photos and films show the weapon recovered was on the sixth floor.
5. No photos and films exist of this supposed other rifle.
6. Only one weapon was removed from the Depository on the afternoon of 11/22/63 - the MC with the serial # C2766.
Why should we trust the outlier recollection? Why do you put any credibility into it, when you can't remember what you were arguing a few hours earlier?
Pretend some more she's the only witness we should consult. What about the Governor? What about Kellerman? What about the First Lady? What did they say?
Can we break the tie by comparing the testimony of all the witnesses in the car? If we try that, we see three witnesses said the same thing, and Greer is the outlier.
Pretend some more we need to ask Greer anything.
The point is you cherry-picked the one witness in the limo who said he didn't recall.
How many people heard JFK say, "My God I've been hit"?
It's all irrelevant anyway, since Greer made it very clear what he was reacting to then, a gunshot which caused him to feel the "concussion" of what could only be the shock wave of a bullet. And if he had heard somebody shouting, it sure as hell, wouldn't have provoked him to slow the limo and do a Linda Blair impression.
Anyway, as you have reminded me, I'm starting to get sloppy. I will check back, probably tomorrow.
"Sinister motives"? Not at all- that's why I asked why you thought BazBear was referring to Greer when he was responding to your post about Kellerman. It's also why I posited two choices- dishonest, or can't keep up. Since you seem to only be able to see and take umbrage at the "sinister" one, I cheerfully withdraw the "sinister" interpretation and grant you the more charitable one of "can't keep up."
I deal with numerous posts in a somewhat assembly line manner and it is tedious and time consuming to look up a post and the posts preceding it, which may not be visible on the current page.
That's why I ASKED whether he was referring to Greer. It must take incredible imagination to come up with the accusation that I am trying to pull a fast one.
"Can't keep up" it is then. Doesn't say much for your mad detecting skills that you couldn't do so when, in fact, both the post you were responding to and yours (that he was responding to) were visible on the same page.
I deleted the URL, not because I am trying to coverup Kellerman's testimony, but because it cuts into the number of URLs I am permitted to link. God, this is tiresome.
Are you freakin' serious? The verbatim quote was in the post you're responding to:
[Kellerman]...and as I turned my head to the right to view whatever it was or see whatever it was, I heard a voice from the back seat and I firmly believe it was the President's, "My God, I am hit," and I turned around and he has got his hands up here like this.
According to you; according to him, it was all part of one "same motion."
Kellerman was wrong. We can see in the film that he didn't go for the mike that early. In the past, people have claimed that he was talking on the mike when he raised his hand to his ear, but besides that being the wrong orifice, he wouldn't have had much to say, in 5/18ths of a second
Funny how the witnesses are wrong when you need them to be. All because you need a startle reflex to a shot to cause a startle reflex.
He confirmed that in his original report; he stated,
"I turned around to find out what happened when two additional shots rang out, and the President slumped into Mrs. Kennedy's lap and Governor Connally fell_to Mrs. Connally's lap. I heard Mrs. Kennedy shout, "What are they doing to you?"
I yelled at William Greer (the driver) to "Step on it, we're hit!" and grabbed the mike from the car radio, called to SA Lawson in the police lead car..
Sorry. Which part of that "confirms" that he didn't go for the mike that early?
By the time he testified, Senator Yarborough and others had criticized the Secret Service, accusing them of being "sluggish", so some of them tended to accelerate their description of events.
Lawson further corroborated the fact that Kellerman was only on the radio after the shooting had ended.
As the Lead Car was passing under this bridge I heard the first loud, sharp report and in more rapid succession two more sounds like gunfire. I could see persons to the left of the motorcade vehicles running away. I noticed Agent Hickey standing up in the follow-up car with the automatic weapon and first thought he had fired at someone. Both the President's car and our Lead Car rapidly accelerated almost simultaneously. I heard a report over the two-way radio that we should proceed to the nearest hospital.
How do you know the "report over the two-way radio that we should proceed to the nearest hospital" that Lawson heard was Kellerman's call? Or, it it was, that it was the only call Kellerman made?
Not to anyone who has wasted.. I mean invested 20 years researching this thing.
She's your witness, Bob- you can't use her testimony when it suits you and discard it when it doesn't. There's also corroboration of hers from her husband; and Kellerman heard (even by your source above) voices from the backseat. You're the one who "should have taken it up with Greer when he was still alive," since you're the one who needs him to explain why his testimony stands alone against three other witnesses. Consensus, remember?
I can't think of anything better than "transparent behavior in pursuit of truth". That's exactly what I do, my friend.
I'm pointing out that of the five witnesses from the limo who testified, you referenced the only one who said he didn't recall any specific conversation, and ignored the corroborative testimony from the others that shows Greer was incorrect.
Why would you do that?
Can we agree that the other witnesses show Greer was wrong?
All of the reactions are consistent with known startle reactions and I have demonstrated that Kellerman exhibited clear startle reactions, including the fact that he hunched his shoulders upward, which Landis and Hunt concluded, is a classic startle reaction.
That's not what "demonstrated" means. The word you are looking for is "explained". But I can explain that the moon is made of green cheese; it doesn't necessarily make it *********** so.
I suppose we could argue all day about what actually constitutes "proof"
3 dimensional backgrounds can never be in perfect perspective on a 2D image. But that is not important to the question of when the slowdown began. The kind of slowdown required to throw the passengers around that much, would have had to have been quite pronounced and easy to see, even in an original copy of the film.
And what we see in the panoramic view, matches perfectly with Dr. Alvarez's conclusions.
Perhaps even more conclusive is that we see reactions by Kellerman that could not possibly have been caused by inertia.
Alvarez's suggestion that Greer slowed the limo in reaction to a loud noise at 285, is extremely persuasive. In addition to his own analysis about the slowdown, it explains why Greer would have made the terrible decision to slow the limo in the middle of a shooting.
Greer was obviously panicked then, which is also why he spun around so rapidly following 285, almost exactly like he did following 313.
And his testimony that he felt the "concussion" of the second shot, adds more corroboration that he was exposed to a very loud, high powered rifle shot.
And as I have said before, he said he was "turned around" when the second shot was fired, which proves that he wasn't thinking of a shot at 160 or 223, when he was looking forward.
Yes, to be honest, I assumed that it was the Zapruder film since it is almost the only film I ever mention, but I have no idea what the full context was and I couldn't possibly care less. I don't obsess on myself like some folks do.
And what I did has no relevance whatsoever to what Ellsworth did or remembered. This is all a waste of bandwidth.
I doubt there is a member of this forum who didn't know that you were going to say Ellsworth was full of crap. I could have written your post for you and probably have done a better job
In the latest iteration of Kennedy conspiracy whack-a-mole, we have multiple pages discussing Robert Harriss's claim of a fourth shot, which was nearly silent and for which no bullet was ever found. This fourth shot bares a remarkable resemblance to the invisible unicorn in my garage.
In the latest iteration of Kennedy conspiracy whack-a-mole, we have multiple pages discussing Robert Harriss's claim of a fourth shot, which was nearly silent and for which no bullet was ever found. This fourth shot bares a remarkable resemblance to the invisible unicorn in my garage.
Did you also diss Posner and Bugliosi for describing a bullet that was also "nearly silent and for which no bullet was ever found"??
Since you seem to have this all figured out, perhaps you will explain why most witnesses only heard one of the early shots and why neither of them were loud enough to provoke the kind of reactions we see, following 285 and 313.
I'm sure you realize that Oswald's rifle was proven to have generated a 130 decibel sound level at street level and that the early shots would have been louder and more startling to the limo passengers than the later ones, if Oswald had fired them all.
I take a few days off to observe Independence Day and the thread goes wild!
I’ll try to answer questions as best I can going through the thread - if I miss something please don’t take offense.
cmikes wrote:
My understanding has always been that the American Mafia, especially at that time, had very strict rules when dealing with the authorities. I had always heard that to even kill off a beat cop or a low level judge was something that had to be approved at the highest levels of their organization, since something like that could easily bring down a world of hurt on them, that the authorities would be all over them in order to avenge "one of their own". So why would they jump immediately from "we have to be really careful about taking out a beat cop that won't play ball with us" to "let's kill the President of the United States"? Has anyone else ever heard this line of thought?
For a good primer on LCN I heartily recommend Thomas Reppetto’s book American Mafia
Reppetto is an ex-CPD detective and ended up a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. By his name I believe he’s Genovese, not Sicilian, but he certainly knows his subject matter from a practical viewpoint.
The chance that the hypothetical “beat cop” could actually pose a threat real enough to warrant being injured or killed by an LCN member or associate (from here on I’ll refer to LCN associates simply as KA’s – Known Associates) is more fiction than fact. The chance that a street cop would run into the situation where they’d encounter a LCN or KA doing serious business is pretty much slim to none, and the types of bad actors a street cop might encounter at all would at best be the lowest level of LCN operator one could find – some guy moving a car, running errands, that type of thing, and issuing a citation isn’t something that’s going to merit Big Guy involvement and violence.
The Mafia and how they operate here in the U.S can be best viewed and explained by dividing it into two parts chronologically – before the establishment of The Commission and after.
Before Charlie Luciano and his guys got the old guys out of power in ’31, various “families” and geographical and ethnic syndicates did their own thing in their own way, and killing outsiders – even then – was viewed as being bad for business, and the bad actors themselves knew that to most cops and politicians, one guy killing another guy that was in the same line of business didn’t bring much heat, but let one “square” or citizen get dead in the course of doing business, that was a whole different story and just about everybody had watched Thomas Dewey ride gangster prosecutions as far as he could go and knew other politicians were similarly inclined.
Even pre - ’31, the idea of actually killing a big-shot like Dewey was rejected on practical, not sentimental reasons. The various independent outfits had been renting political and law enforcement officers as needed forever, and who they couldn’t bribe, for the most part they could ignore.
Post ’31 with Luciano and The Commission, there were indeed actual rules put into place to minimize exposure to risk for LCN as a whole and maximize profits, and generally murder is not a profitable enterprise. What Luciano did bring to the big party was putting the “organized” into organized crime. His institution of the commission and the assigning of franchise to various LCN operators in cities across the country and instituting what amounted to taxes on the franchises and profit sharing from NYC back to the smaller operators was good business sense and kept most everybody happy with the status quo, at least up until the breakup of the Vegas interests and the large scale entry of LCN outfits into the coke and heroin business – don’t believe the public relations releases through fiction that claim that LCN avoided the drug business – the only objection some of the old guys had was that even way back when the penalties for narcotic sales were so stiff that they worried that even a made guy that was looking at life inside at age 30 might turn rat in the face of it. IIRC one of Luciano’s first busts was heroin related.
To get back to the question of whether or not LCN could be involved with murdering cops, politicians or other civilians, my belief is that as a sanctioned act, I’d have to see strong verifiable evidence before I’d ever believe it (and no, Marcello’s jail house bragging doesn’t make the cut, sorry RH) and if we were discussing a specific Mafiosi in a specific incident with a single individual, not someone of note ( for instance, lockstep surveillance on Sam Giancana without a close witness, bad timing encounter with Roy DeMeo, bad timing encounter w/ Tony Spilotro) that would be a situation where a murder might be committed outside any sanction and without much thinking on the part of the Mafiosi in question. What LCN would do to the murderer after the fact would have much more to do with damage control than family honor and the old Commission rules.
For a fictional representation that probably has more truth to it than LCN or KA’s killing a LEO, in movie The Pope of Greenwich Village the character Paulie slips a cop a horse laxative mickey (please note, doesn’t work in the RW) and makes the most of it – warning, mild NSFW language:
RH and other Cists have glommed onto the issue of Castro’s nationalization of the Havana casinos as the reason for entering into the Administration’s proposed conspiracy to assassinate Castro, but here’s my take – as much as the old guys wanted their casinos back they knew it was pretty much a lost cause, but they knew very well how to “milk the cow” and Uncle Sam was paying cash money. I have no trouble believing that once the Wise Guys saw Uncle didn’t know **** from Shinola from getting a job like that done (poison cigars? WTFO?) they milked every last dollar and concession out of Uncle before Uncle decided the job couldn’t get done. If you’re interested in how LCN operated in Cuba before Castro, I recommend Havana Nocturne:
The other question I had was in regard to American Mafia tactics. Was it really their style to make a hit in a very public venue in front of hundreds of witnesses? In this day and age of the drug cartels and narco-terrorists, I realize it does happen somewhat, although still rarely in the US, but I have trouble thinking of any older mob hits that were carried out in this fashion. When I think of mob hits, I think of stuff like the Hoffa killing, the target simply disappears never to be see again. Even the killings that were supposedly connected to JFK happened in this fashion. Jimmy Roselli, who people claim was killed to hide his role in the JFK case, (ironically enough, he was claimed to be the "storm drainer shooter" by a lot of CTs) just disappeared and was later found in an oil drum in the ocean. Now, obviously the mob wouldn't be able to "disappear" JFK, but it seems they could have figured out something a little less ostentatious than snipers during a motorcade in front of hundreds of people.
There’s a big difference between traditional organized crime groups like LCN, the Japanese Yakuza and the Chinese Triads and Tongs and the newer emerging cocaine syndicates based in Central and South America. The emerging cartels are only 40 – 50 years in at the most in 2015, and they simply haven’t learned what LCN learned almost 100 years ago – that dead bodies draw flies – flies as vernacular for cops – and the social system in parts south is so endemically corrupt that it’s hard to understand why the various cartels need to not only murder so many cops and politicians, but also seem to find it necessary to murder so many civilians in particularly gruesome ways.
There’s a very good documentary on the cocaine trade in Florida back in the 1970’s into the early 1980’s – Cocaine Cowboys:
That I recommend and is very interesting for the point of view provided by a professional murderer for one of the importers that is interviewed in prison. He describes being out with the woman he worked for and another friend, on the occasion of his birthday. He states that the woman wanted to give him a special birthday present, and as they were all happy and high at the end of the night driving home she stopped the car they were in, pointed out a uniformed police officer and told the guy to shoot him – that was going to be his birthday present…he stated he’d shoot just about anyone anywhere, but not a cop in the U.S. He also explained that the extreme violence in south Florida at the time was driven by the outlook of the shooters, often coked up themselves, was that they’d go to a house to kill a guy, the guy’s there with his family, they all have to go, girl scouts and kids in front of the house when they’d split, he wouldn’t shoot them but to other shooters they’d have to go too.
It’s also interesting that Miami PD had such a hard time finding recruits that they had to lower the standards for recruits from never having used drugs even once to basically not being high when they filled out the application…and out of one graduating class from their academy every single officer in that class ended up dead, under indictment or in prison.
Viewed in the light of Cocaine Cowboys. The recent events down south aren’t so surprising.
Jayutah on Sicily – You’re correct, but what eventually caused the big break between the American Families and the Families on the island and the actual public rejection of LCN by the public, complete with massive public anti-mafia protests was the rounds of killing kicked off by the assassination of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in ’93, and the murders of judges and prosecutors that followed. All the old rules were ignored from the Falcone assassination forward (the bomb that killed Falcone took his wife and three LEO’s as well) The American families didn’t want even a little part of the trouble that the Corleonesi started in the 1980’s in the first place (that you reference) and the war they started with the government in ’93 sealed the deal, at that point whatever contact and cooperation there was between LCN here and there ended. Whatever happened between them when the smoke cleared on the Island is unknown to me.
RH:
My understanding is that the mafia had very few rules, beyond the one that said the last man standing is in charge.
I’d suggest reading Reppetto’s book on the subject, linked above. Post 1931 if you can provide proof of LCN murdering even a garden variety LEO I’d like to see that evidence.
Just as an aside in the interest of intellectual honesty, there is an example of an assassination of an official by what would be considered an organized crime group, but unfortunately for RH’s and other CTists, it sure wasn’t LCN:
Albert Patterson (January 27, 1894 – June 18, 1954) was an attorney in Phenix City, Alabama. He was assassinated outside his law office shortly after he won the Democratic nomination for Alabama Attorney General on a platform of reforming the rife corruption and vice in Phenix City.
Phenix City was where troops stationed at Ft Benning would go to give away their money, and back in the day (as in before Patterson) the good citizens of Phenix City were happy to provide booze, gambling and hookers to speed up the process, just as long as the trooper was white, at least back then. By the time I made the scene it was much tamer and more welcoming to folks other than white, but they didn’t seem to be very happy about it.
The local crime syndicate was small time and local, and in all probability wouldn’t cotton to Sicilians any better than they’d cotton to blacks.
They also weren’t sophisticated enough to deal with local issues the real old fashioned way, by making sure their folks and their folks only counted the ballots.
RH, further:
My source is Carlos Marcello. I think that trumps your source.
Actually, what you have is your acceptance (based on your CT wish fulfillment) that CM’s “confession” carries any practical value past fulfilling your fantasy construct. The reasons that the FBI didn’t jump into high gear when they got their hands on the tape is #1 they didn’t believe that CM was telling the truth to two low level convicts that weren’t LCN, a KA of LCN or otherwise someone that could make some sense for CM to tell the truth to, and #2 the declarative statement on tape had no actionable information for them to use to verify CM’s confession. Joe Blow walks into a police station and confesses to the crime of the century, even somebody who might have done the deed, without something tangible (as in the murder weapon, etc) to back up the confession no prosecutor is going to go for an indictment, and I can’t even begin to imagine (having had to present evidence myself) trying to talk a prosecuting attorney into an arrest warrant, let alone a criminal indictment, on something as inconclusive as the CM tape.
RH from various posts: Neither subsonic weapons or suppressors are "specialist weapons". There are countless examples on Youtube, of people who fashioned such devices out of beer cans or flashlights, both of which are quite effective. Watch this example of a guy using a silencer made from an oil filter. Move the timer to about 1:2
It’s very clear to me (and I’m sure certain other posters) that while you’re basing your fantasy construct on some sort of a suppressed firearm, a firearm firing subsonic ammunition or a combination of the two, you’re not familiar enough with the basic technology of firearms, let alone the technology of firearms, suppressors and ammunition circa 1963 and earlier to make a concise accounting of how such a firearm would be configured or perform. Further, citing contemporary Youtube videos of folks having fun in the sun with factory built or improvised cans has -0- to do with the tackle that would be available even to authorized users and lawful owners of N.F.A. weapons and devices in ‘63.
You could only think this notion is absurd, if you are not knowledgeable about these devices. Suppressors were first available in the U.S. in 1909. They were used in WW1 and much more frequently, by military snipers on both sides, in WW2. You should read this article, which will get you up to speed on the subject.
I am in no way misinformed about suppressor tech from Maxim forward. Rifle caliber suppressors were indeed available from Maxim circa ’09, but a funny thing happened on the way to your assertion of “frequent use” by snipers:
Despite global marketing by Maxim, no nation's military force made widespread use of silencers until World War II. The Maxim Model 1912 was the first mass-marketed silencer designed specifically for military purposes. Created for use with the popular Springfield rifle, the report of the weapon was reduced, but the sonic boom of the bullet could not be diminished. The passage of the bullet sounded like someone tearing a sheet until the projectile passed a solid object, like a tree, which resulted in the emission of a large crack. The 1912 model was not sold to any government in great numbers, perhaps because of the notorious conservativeness of military planners in this era, but it did find a few buyers. The U.S. Army purchased a few of the weapons to be used by sharpshooters for the quiet, long-range killing of sentries so that surprise attacks could be mounted. The silencers were apparently used in Mexico in the campaign against Pancho Villa, but, because the Army failed to halt Villa, the effectiveness of the silencers is somewhat in doubt.
And further:
In the years after the war, public interest in silencers waned, and Maxim halted production in 1925.
In WWII, the US had two issued suppressed firearms, and neither were in rifle calibers and no dismountable rifle caliber cans were issued – High Standard produced an integrally suppressed version of their .22 HD pistol, using a wire wrap on the ported barrel and wire mesh discs in the front section. They worked well until they got hot, and needed repacking on a very regular basis. The other weapon was an integrally suppressed version of the M3 SMG in .45 using a suppressor design by Bell Labs similar to the H-S pistol design, and it worked, again, until they get hot (1 mag does the trick, even firing 2 round bursts) and neither would be practical candidates for use in your version of the day’s events.
The Nazi’s had a dismountable can and subsonic ammo for the K98k. I’ve seen registered examples of their can that came back from WWII but haven’t had the opportunity to disassemble or use one. IIRC the can and subsonic ammo dropped effective range to less than 300 yds. I’ve never run across original 7.92 subsonic, even back then.
The British used suppressed SMG’s (The Mk IIS STEN gun was a much better design than our M3, except for caliber…) and handguns but also didn’t adopt cans for their .303 rifles.
The Soviets used anything they could get their hands on, but I’d bet cash money that every comrade that got issued an M44 Carbine prayed to uncle Joe for a can every time he squeezed the trigger…The sound that readers hear in the background right now is RanB laughing.
You mean a custom installation. Check Youtube. You will find a small army of people who have installed very effective suppressors made from flashlights, oil filters, beer cans and other equally exotic items. Watch this video of a guy using an oil filter. Move the timer to 1:20
See above – improvised cans circa 2015 have nothing to do with improvised or factory built cans 1963 or earlier, and to get to the bottom line, not too many SOT’s in ’63 or earlier were turning out cans for commercial sale – not because they didn’t know how, but because there was very little demand for the product. The LE market had no interest in the subject back then (and contrary to what you believe, not much now. Ask me, I’ve written many a MENS - Mission Essential Needs Statement – over the years) and neither did the U.S. military. Lawful end users bought an old Maxim can and rebuilt it or SOT’s built their own. The factory cans we had when I was a kid were old Maxims my father rebuilt and fooled around with more than anything else, they weren’t using tools to him.
That's interesting, perhaps you should write to the US military, and every other military organization on the planet, which uses them frequently in sniper operations.
Pretty much shoots a hole in your earlier assertion above that suppressors and subsonic ammo aren’t “specialist weapons” because few MOS’s are as specialized as that of a sniper or designated marksman. Current military suppressor use has no bearing on the events in Dallas.
So do numerous police forces in this country.
No, they don’t. It’s a rare and enlightened law enforcement administrator that allows the use of suppressors, even if it’s only in designated incidents. My favorite example of this is a major metro that refused to adopt suppressors for their tactical team…but did allow the Animal Control department to purchase two suppressed .22 caliber rifles for dispatching injured animals, because they didn’t want the public to get upset if they heard an AC officer shoot an injured animal. Hearing protection for the entry team using short barreled 5.56 is so much less of a concern…and while we’re on the subject, you do realize that the intent of Maxim when he invented the sound suppressor was protecting the hearing of shooters and as a noise pollution control device?
Why not use a weapon that was designed for subsonic bullets? And the mob would have made their own suppressors, rather than buying commercial units that were traceable.
Since 1934 there’s been a little federal law on the books called The National Firearms Act. It established a whole range of restrictions on machine guns, sound suppressors, short barreled rifles, short barreled shotguns, and a catch-all category of “Any Other Weapon” that covers things like cane guns, knuckle duster guns etc. You have to jump through a bunch of hoops as a would-be NFA owner and to be a licensed manufacturer (Special Occupational Taxpayer, I was one) you have to jump through hoops and pay some serious money, regularly. There's -0- chance that LCN or a KA went through the process to legally purchase an NFA weapon or device.
One of the things that LCN never dipped their fingers into successfully was actual firearms/ammo/explosives manufacture, much past sawing the barrels off on a shotgun or filing down the point on an FMJ bullet. The last time anybody connected an actual gunsmith to organized crime (and it wasn’t LCN) was this guy:
Lebman continued to sell his machine pistols and other automatic weapons until the passage of the National Firearms Act in 1934. When Chicago bootlegger Roger "The Terrible" Touhy was arrested in Wisconsin on July 19, 1933, one of Lebman's "baby machine guns" was found in his car. Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger, and several known associates of the Dillinger gang were also customers.[6] A full-auto Lebman Colt belonging to Dillinger was found at one of his hideouts in St. Paul, Minnesota on March 31, 1934 as well as leaving behind at the Little Bohemia Lodge three weeks later.[1][2][3]
Why LCN has never been able to enter domestic production of legal or restricted firearms I have no idea, especially in light of the fact that OMG’s and White Power mental defectives have done so successfully.
Yes, of course. But I was responding to an allegation that suppressors were uncommon. Obviously, any suppressed rifle used to fire the early shots, would have been of relatively low caliber and subsonic.
This is really where your square peg of fantasy doesn’t fit into the round hole of reality.
If you’re really interested in the actual science involved, RanB already schooled you on the necessary changes in rifling twist that would be need to stabilize in flight a longer, heavier projectile needed to be part of a viable subsonic weapons system. Engel Ballistic Research wasn’t even a gleam in his eye in ’63, and nobody was loading subsonic rifle ammunition commercially at that time – see above – the day I see some evidence that back in the day Vinnie the Chin and Joe Gar took time off from the track and the bar to run a reloading operation I might reconsider, but until then I ain’t buying the Mafia master gunsmith theory.
But wait! Why does it have to be a rifle caliber Uncle B? I’ll explain why the handgun caliber as a second weapon is an even worse no-goer than the subsonic rifle/suppressor theory. As bad as the two rifle caliber theory is (RH, you’ve never asserted that the two weapons used were both 6.5 x 52R) changing the second weapon involved to a subsonic handgun caliber is even worse. The different wound ballistics between supersonic rifle caliber and subsonic handgun calibers is so pronounced that if two shooters used those weapons and both hit a human target, the disparity between the wounds would be immediately apparent to any doctor or medical examiner. Please, no pre-fragmented projectile jive.
A subsonic handgun caliber weapon would also present some challenges for the shooter in 1963. In ’63, we were still four years away from the T/C Contender (single shot break-open action w/ interchangeable barrels, handgun and rifle stocked versions) and outside of the old Winchester 1892 lever action or the Marlin handgun caliber levers or the Ruger .44 magnum semi auto carbines there were no pistol caliber rifles. Why a rifle? If you want to at least make it seem as if your theory is based somewhat on reality we’d better stick with the long gun. Other than the Ruger, there weren’t easy options for scope mounting either - why not iron sights? Add a can, lose your irons.
That brings me to the issue of the actual use of a subsonic handgun cartridge. At any distance past 25 yards the trajectory starts to look more like a rainbow than a stretched string. The bullet drop at 100 yards for .45 ACP in the standard (subsonic 230 grain ball 850 fps M/L) issue loading is M/L 7 inches, pushing the same slug a bit hotter (950 fps good +p) doesn’t get you enough improvement to make a difference.
I’ve gone on for too long here. The bottom line for me is this theory fails - There were no additional shooters using popular fiction based silent weapons, no matter how many assertions to the contrary the theory monger posts.
You tell us there was a silenced rifle present which was fired, but didn't hit anybody.
You're tripling down on a sound-of-gunshot theory for a crime committed in an area where the echo is bad enough to make even non-CT testimony of sound inadmissible.
You ramble on about the Dal-Tex building no being searched even though it might have been, at least in part in the hour after the assassination as DPD officers canvased the area. The problem is the shots all came from the 6th Floor of the TSBDP, witnesses saw the barrel of the rifle and sent the police into the building.
If you could produce a silenced rifle, or a custom made silencer, or commercially available silencer from 1963, or perhaps KGB or CIA custom weapons from the day you would have so much more traceable information to work with. These things would have only been made by a small group of people, and would have been used by a smaller group of people. This would set the foundation for a plausible line on inquiry. You just assume a silenced weapon was present without any solid grounds to do so.
Just to throw this in, why have a second shooter present armed with a rifle that wasn't going to hit anything?
Nobody has presented an example of the Mob killing someone with a rifle at range. They usually conduct their hits face-to-face.
Why kill a President when you could blackmail him? There's no money in dead bodies.
This phrasing implies, assumes at least four shots, as we know that you hold that there was a pair of shots at the end, close together.
And how do you get there? You combine testimony of witnesses who reported hearing two nearly simultaneous sounds, rather more vague descriptions and even outright different estimates with, of course, the cornerstone to your edifice, a shot at Zapruder frame 285, which is 1.5 seconds before the headshot between frames 312 and 313.
So you're off to a flying start here, with the begged questions. You conclude with one, too, which I will highlight:
All of the reactions are consistent with known startle reactions and I have demonstrated that Kellerman exhibited clear startle reactions, including the fact that he hunched his shoulders upward, which Landis and Hunt concluded, is a classic startle reaction.
No sir, "assertions" are pretty much all we do around here - right, wrong or somewhere in between. In fact, your claim that "assertions won't be one of the options" is also an assertion.
Perhaps you might wish to reassess your thinking about our respective mastery of word usage
Better yet, why don't you explain in detail, why you believe that my little Kellerman presentation fails to make my case.
My phrasing reflects exactly what the people who heard those shot, stated,
..a substantial majority of the witnesses stated that the shots were not evenly spaced. Most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together.
At one point during the hearings, Warren Commissioner Allen Dulles noted the overwhelming consistency of these witnesses, when he described the ratio of those confirming that shooting scenario in comparison with others,
There has been a certain amount of testimony indicating there was a longer pause between the report of the first shot... and the second and third shots, that is not absolutely unanimous but I would say it is something like 5 to 1 or something of that kind.
And how do you get there? You combine testimony of witnesses who reported hearing two nearly simultaneous sounds, rather more vague descriptions and even outright different estimates with, of course, the cornerstone to your edifice, a shot at Zapruder frame 285, which is 1.5 seconds before the headshot between frames 312 and 313.
We don't need the long winded spin. Most of the people who the heard the shots said the last ones were "closely bunched". That matches perfectly with shots spaced 1.3 to 1.5 seconds apart.
And it's quite easy to see that there were two independent and similar sets of reactions following 285 and then 313, the only difference being that the latter reactions were more prominent than the earlier ones. Notice how Kellerman and Greer reacted in perfect tandem with one another and almost identically following each of the shots.
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