Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Accuracy of Weapon

Testing by the FBI and the U.S. Army Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch using Mannlicher-Carcano rifle C2766 and over 100 rounds of Western Cartridge Co. ammunition—matching that used in the assassination—produced no misfires, confirming the weapon’s operational reliability under the conditions relevant to the assassination.

第五章 of this report.

The Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Ballistics Research Laboratory and the FBI each conducted separate series of tests using the assassination rifle to evaluate its accuracy, its rate of fire, and the likelihood that the weapon’s operator could have replicated the timing of the shots fired during the assassination, with NRA master marksmen firing from a tower at three silhouette targets at distances of 175, 240, and 265 feet, and FBI agents including Robert A. Frazier firing the weapon at ranges from 15 to 100 yards to determine how rapidly and tightly grouped the shots could be placed. Based on these tests, firearms experts including Simmons and Frazier testified that the Mannlicher-Carcano was a quite accurate weapon with less recoil than the average military rifle, that a four-power scope was a substantial aid to rapid and accurate firing, and that the shooter did not need to be an expert marksman to accomplish the assassination, leading the Commission to conclude that Oswald, given his Marine training and familiarity with the rifle, possessed ample capability to fire three shots with two hits within the 4.8 to 5.6 second span established elsewhere in the report.