LAK
I agree with you completely. In fact, as I was reading this thread I said almost the same thing to myself.
Hitting a MOVING target is a totally different ballgame than trying to hit a static paper target. Trying to make that shot on the President of the US is totally different than trying to make that shot on a rifle range. Shooting out of the window of a building is completely different than lying on a Marine Corps. rifle range in a shooting jacket, slung up, using a good USGI rifle from a solid shooting postion at a known distance.
To keep going with your train of thought: In defensive handgun shooting, it is commonly accepted by the experts that head shots are extremly difficult to make in real life (as opposed to paper targets on the range where they arn't that easy either). Even if the body itself is stationary, the head is often moving around. Long story short, most serious shooters agree that head shots at defensive pistol ranges are a low percentage shot. Yet, people on these boards discuss over and over just how easy it is to make one with a rifle at a guy sitting in a moving car at 80 yards.
This will probably get me into trouble, but this is just another one of these things that I read on this board that makes me wonder just how much the people here actually shoot as opposed to talking about shooting online.
How do you even practice such a shot ? The average guy doesn't have access to a moving target to get the idea of how you lead the target. I bet a HUGE percentage of shooters have never seriously shot at a moving target in their lives. At best they might have shot a .22 at a rabbit at a small fraction of 80 yards under no pressure using a semiauto rifle and a dozen rounds of ammo.
When I took Gunsite's basic carbine class, we shot at moving targets from around 50 yards (as I remember). They had targets that moved back and forth across the range. At the time, I was pretty tuned up. I had been shooting that rifle regularly and was in the middle of a pretty intensive shooting class where I was shooting hundreds of rounds per day. I was able to put my shots in the chest of a silhouette target AFTER I tried a few shots and could see on paper where my shots were hitting so I could adjust my lead. In this senario there was no pressure, I was shooting on a comfortable rifle range, I was using a rifle that I had shot thousands of rounds through, the rifle had an Aimpoint ML2 on it, the targets moved at a constant speed at a constant angle to the firing line while the targets themselves were completely stationary (not like a human looking around, talking to other people, waving at people etc.). Based on this experience, I might have been able to make the shot but it is FAR, FAR more difficult than most people who have never tried it think.
If the shot is so easy, why are we having people like Carlos Hatchcock try to duplicate it ? Being a Marine Corps sniper was only part of Hathcock's shooting legacy. Prior to all that, he won the Wimbilton Cup at Camp Perry as a member of the Marine Corp. Rifle team. Long story short, at one time Hathcock was one of the best rifle shooters in the world. Yet, people think that if Hatchcock could make the shot, then a guy that simply qualified with a rifle in boot camp must be able to make it also ?
In some of these TV shows about this whole affair I have seen witnesses telling us how they know Oswald practiced with the rifle.
Please.
Do you have any idea just how much practice it takes to become a good shooter ? How about just to smoothly operate a bolt action rifle on a moving target ?
To answer the question posed in the first post of the thread: My opinion is that no one in the world could consistently make that shot with a handgun. They might luck one in if they got to do it over and over. But, if you set the whole thing up as realistically as possible: no practice, range only estimated, out of a window, one try (no do overs), I would feel comfortable riding in the car myself no matter who was trying to hit me with a handgun.
I don't normally get into these Kennedy threads. I am discussing this ONLY from the shooting standpoint. In other words, how easy was the shot. The rest of it, I don't want to get into.
), but I basically agree with him that the conspiracy theories are just bunk. He shows what many riflemen already know--3 aimed shots in 10 seconds at that range is nowhere near impossible with a rifle.
