At first glimpse….

By James Lockhart

This weekend I was able to visit Dealey Plaza in Dallas. This is where John F Kennedy was assassinated. I paid twenty five bucks for a tour of the Texas School Book Depository. The tour allowed me to stand in the window where Lee Harvey Oswald stood when he fired the shots.

All of my life I’ve been told the shots were impossible. I remember watching a special on one of the news channels when I was a kid. They set up the shot from the exact height and used trained marksmen to try to duplicate what Lee Harvey Oswald did that day. The marksmen found it difficult to do. The car President Kennedy was riding in was moving and that made the shot harder. The news station made a big deal out of it.

Years later I watched the movie JFK and the movie in all of its Hollywood extravagance made several claims about multiple shooters and whatnot.

With all that being said, I’ve wanted to stand in that window and look down at the street and see how hard I thought the shot would have been.

After I paid for my tour an elevator took me to the sixth floor. They have all sorts of information for people to digest about the events of the day. They also have conflicting reports of a single shooter or many shooters. I read through most of the information as I made the tour.

The grand finale for me though was looking out the exact same window that Lee Harvey Oswald used on that fateful day.

My first gut feeling when I stood in the window and looked down to the street was that Lee Harvey Oswald had an easy shot. I think most of the guys I deer hunt with could have made those shots.

The first shot was roughly fifty yards. The last two shots were about a hundred. The official distance says the fatal third shot (head shot) was 266 feet, which equals 88 yards. The rifle that was used is kind of similar to a 243, though it’s not as fast. The ammunition looked like Full Metal Jacket bullets, which to me explains the penetration of the first shot that went through the president and into Governor Connally.

The presidential limousine was going so slow the Secret Service agent in the car behind was able to run forward and jump on the back of the president’s car when the shots were fired. I watched the Zapruder film and I could see the secret service agent run and jump onto the back of the car after the shots were fired.

That very first instinct as I peered out the window, Oswald had an easy shot. It sent chills down my spine. I’ve hunted all of my life. The first shot hit the president in the back and exited his front. That shot was only about fifty yards. Oswald had a concrete window sill for a rest. The second shot was rushed, but the third shot wasn’t. Oswald had a slow moving target almost moving straight away from him. It was an easy shot. Most deer rifles are sighted in for a hundred yards. That final shot most likely was close to the distance he had the rifle zeroed in for.

After I took the tour I walked down the street, there is an X in the street where the president’s car was when each shot was fired. As I looked back up to the school book depository again I was confident the shots came from the window and not the grassy knoll. The grassy knoll is at almost a right angle to where the car was, it would have been a much harder shot than from the window where Oswald was.

All of my life TV and the internet has told me the shots were too tough for Oswald. After seeing it for myself I am convinced, they weren’t hard shots.

I know many people will always claim there was multiple shooters and some top secret government conspiracy. I don’t know about a conspiracy, but after seeing it with my own eyes- I think there was only one shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald. It wasn’t a difficult shot.

Click each photo for a larger image.