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Oswald & Ammunition


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I would think that in 1963 Dallas, if that is in fact when and where he obtained them, ammunition purchases would be about as common as chewing gum.

The rifle evidence and the revolver evidence are of different orders of magnitude.

Even without his fingerprints we KNOW he ACTUALLY possesed ammo for the revolver.

THe original question on this thread pinpoints why the rifle is in a different category from the revolver. If he had truly bought a box of M-C ammo why was there no trace of M-C ammo in his belongings.

We do not know, and cannot prove, that he EVER had ammo for that Carcano, but we DO KNOW and can prove that he did have ammo for the revolver.

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I would think that in 1963 Dallas, if that is in fact when and where he obtained them, ammunition purchases would be about as common as chewing gum.

The rifle evidence and the revolver evidence are of different orders of magnitude.

Even without his fingerprints we KNOW he ACTUALLY possesed ammo for the revolver.

THe original question on this thread pinpoints why the rifle is in a different category from the revolver. If he had truly bought a box of M-C ammo why was there no trace of M-C ammo in his belongings.

We do not know, and cannot prove, that he EVER had ammo for that Carcano, but we DO KNOW and can prove that he did have ammo for the revolver.

And the way we do know, and can prove he had handgun ammunition is because he was caught with it. There are no receipts, eyewitnesses, or any other indication that he purchased that ammo.

There is no evidence that he ever bought Carcano ammo either, but that does not mean he did not posses any.

So here is the point, if he acquired ammo for the pistol, which he obviously did, in an undetected manner, then there is no reason to believe that he could not have done the same for the Carcano.

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So here is the point, if he acquired ammo for the pistol, which he obviously did, in an undetected manner, then there is no reason to believe that he could not have done the same for the Carcano.

Of course it is POSSIBLE that he bought ammo for the rifle, but a MERE POSSIBILITY that something happened does nothing to PROVE or ESTABLISH AS A FACT that the something in question ever did happen. Human history is full of stuff that could have happened but never did.

I am sure you know that an accused person doesn't have to prove ANYTHING. The BURDEN of PROOF is on the accuser and the fact remains that no one has ever proven that Lee Oswald ever bought or possessed ammunition for the rifle.

Let's go back to the questions that began this thread:

So my questions:

1. Is it true that no extra ammo was found in any of Oswald's effects?

2. If so, would it be unusual to not find any?

3. If so, what are we to make of the fact that none was found?

Thanks,

Dan

I submit that the answers are:

1. YES

2. YES. If he had bought a box of rifle ammo we would expect to find some evidence. In the case of revolver ammo we do find evidence, hence the two cases are very different.

But the logical conclusion is that, had I purchased a box of ammunition, and used less that the entire box, the remaining ammunition would've been found either on my person or in my personal effects somewhere.

3. This fact supports the plea of NOT GUILTY he entered at Arraignment.

That is about as far as we can take the rifle ammo question for now. We should know more about the rifle ammo when the documents still classified TOP SECRET are finally made public.

Edited by J. Raymond Carroll
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So here is the point, if he acquired ammo for the pistol, which he obviously did, in an undetected manner, then there is no reason to believe that he could not have done the same for the Carcano.

Of course it is POSSIBLE that he bought ammo for the rifle, but a MERE POSSIBILITY that something happened does nothing to PROVE or ESTABLISH AS A FACT that the something in question ever did happen. Human history is full of stuff that could have happened but never did.

I am sure you know that an accused person doesn't have to prove ANYTHING. The BURDEN of PROOF is on the accuser and the fact remains that no one has ever proven that Lee Oswald ever bought or possessed ammunition for the rifle.

Let's go back to the questions that began this thread:

So my questions:

1. Is it true that no extra ammo was found in any of Oswald's effects?

2. If so, would it be unusual to not find any?

3. If so, what are we to make of the fact that none was found?

Thanks,

Dan

I submit that the answers are:

1. YES

2. YES. If he had bought a box of rifle ammo we would expect to find some evidence. In the case of revolver ammo we do find evidence, hence the two cases are very different.

But the logical conclusion is that, had I purchased a box of ammunition, and used less that the entire box, the remaining ammunition would've been found either on my person or in my personal effects somewhere.

3. This fact supports the plea of NOT GUILTY he entered at Arraignment.

That is about as far as we can take the rifle ammo question for now. We should know more about the rifle ammo when the documents still classified TOP SECRET are finally made public.

Raymond,

And what an interesting day that will be!

I would submit that Oswald has shown a precedent. He has shown his ability, in the pistol ammunition, to acquire such in an undetectable manner. While there is no evidence that he obtained rifle ammunition in this manner, it does exhibit his ability to do so.

I agree the ammo case is pending new documents! I wonder what those papers will tell us, and why they have been hidden?

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But it nevertheless remains a fact that no purchase of [RIFLE] ammunition ..... was ever connected with Oswald, and that no other shells or bullets other than those found at the murder scene..... were ever found to have ever been in his possession.

Duke: Your post covers the FBI ammo investigation in the Dallas area, and thank you for posting the links.

Do you know if the FBI made similar inquiries in New Orleans?

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But it nevertheless remains a fact that no purchase of [RIFLE] ammunition ..... was ever connected with Oswald, and that no other shells or bullets other than those found at the murder scene..... were ever found to have ever been in his possession.

Duke: Your post covers the FBI ammo investigation in the Dallas area, and thank you for posting the links.

Do you know if the FBI made similar inquiries in New Orleans?

Raymond,

Excellent question. I meant to ask that earlier, but lost my train of thought.

Unfortunately that train often consists of nothing more than a coal car, and a caboose, and even then its only HO Scale.

Ugh,

Mike

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Duke;

Long ago, I dug into the morass of all of the various shell casings that the FBI purportedly received and tested, as well as information relative to ammunition box(s).

For some reason, aging memory tells me that the ammo box(s) found at the gravel pit were 7.35mm ammo boxes.

Of course this has that "memory' problem added in.

This is all buried away somewhere and I would have to dig deeply and hope that I could find it, even to accurately determine what the final outcome of that information was.

Whatever it was, it lead nowhere.

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Thank you all for your responses - great reading.

So, if I may summarize (though the length of the post may not make it a summary :) ), and please correct where I am wrong:

1. Yes, it is true that no extra ammunition from the Mannlicher-Carcano was found in any of Oswald's effects.

There were Two Empty Boxes Marked "6.5 Italian Ammunition", which became FBI Exhibit Number D79 (per http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...sPageId=374706), but no one has ever seen these boxes. They may have come from the Paine's house or from a gravel pit in Irving TX.

It does not appear to me that we can learn anything conclusive from these boxes. Maybe Billy Bob Texan threw them in a gravel pit in Irving, maybe Lee Oswald bought the boxes, maybe LHO was given the boxes, maybe they are just random cardboard boxes that Billy Bob Texan wrote on to distinguish them from all the other ammo boxes stored near his gun collection. (BTW I am not trying to be perjorative when I use the phrase "Billy Bob Texan", any more than I would be if I said "Skyler Boston Brahmin" - I am just putting a "name" on the people in question and trying to make a little bit of a funny. Heh, heh, heh.)

Boxes or no boxes, no extra AMMO was ever found in LHO's effects.

2. Yes, it is odd not to find any.

3. What can we make of this, that is, how could this oddity be explained?

Assume for the sake of this argument that LHO was on the 6th floor of TSBD and had his M-C there and fired it (I know, none of these is necessarily the case, but go with me for a sec here). Then it's possible LHO was down to his last four bullets at the time - meaning that he had gotten at least one box of the ammo somewhere, used the first 16 bullets of the box practicing (somewhere), and had 4 left in the M-C when he went to kill JFK. I gotta say, that sounds unlikely - why would you be relying on only the 4 left, beacuase what if you missed? (Indeed, if he was really there and he saw his first shot miss and hit the curb, he must have thought "uh-oh.") Nonetheless, it's POSSIBLE.

But for it to be possible, LHO had to get his bullets from someplace. Oswald might have purchased the ammo, but apparently he did not do so at either of the two shops in the greater Dallas area that sold the WCC 6.5 bullets. As Mr Lane notes, it appears that the FBI looked around pretty darn hard to find every place in the Dallas area LHO could have purchased same, and all the leads came back with a big old zero for LHO having purchased them himself. One would assume that if the FBI had found a place near Dallas that Oswald even might have purchased his bullets, it would be in the WC report.

Seems like Oswald didn't buy bullets for the M-C in the Dallas area; yet (for the sake of this argument) he certainly had some on Nov 22 1963. So...how did he get them? Possibilities appear to be:

-He bought the bullets in New Orleans while he lived there starting in April 1963. (Possible, I suppose...as Mr Carroll asked, do we know if FBI investigated this possibility? Also, do we know if LHO took the M-C (delivered to Texas in March) with him to NO in April?)

-He bought the bullets in Mexico City while he was there. (Seems pretty unlikely.)

-Someone else gave him the bullets in Dallas (finally, something that seems likely!).

-He found his ammo hanging around. (I don't think so.)

-He ordered his ammo through the mail, just as he did with the guns. (As Mr Lane notes, Was this possible at the time? Was it ever investigated?) But, there's no record of this anywhere, and one assumes if there had been the FBI would have put it in the WC Report.

It is clear to me that the most likely scenario is that someone else gave Oswald his bullets, said "someone else" having either purchased them from one of the locations in Dallas, or gotten them in some other fashion.

But...there is still the problem of only having the 4 bullets. If no other M-C ammo was ever found in his personal effects, that implies to me that either a, Oswald had some personal effects that were never examined, or b, someone tampered with his personal effects before they were examined by law enforcement.

This is why I personally find the question of the Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition to be so critical. From this evidence ALONE it appears that Oswald had at least one accomplice who provided him with bullets, and MOST LIKELY at least one other one who either concealed or removed evidence. Doesn't it?

So then the question becomes, who might have provided Oswald with ammo and why, and who might have concealed or sanitized his personal effects and why?

(EDIT: And as for the ammo in the gun used on Tippit, that's a whole nother story of oddities that I have more questions about...for a different thread.)

Edited by Dan Herrick
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Dan,

I'm gonna try to slip in here first with some comments before anyone else.

First, that's a good summary ... and you are entitled to call it a "summary" since it is, after all, shorter than most of MY posts! What you are not entitled to do, however, is call me Mister: "Duke" will do just fine, tenk you veddy much!

I disagree that there is any likelihood that the empty ammo boxes came from the Paine residence. There is entirely too much that militates against it. Not only the Paines attitude, but the Saturday "shopping search" as well.

What I didn't mention in my earlier discourse was that, in addition to trying to find where LHO might've bought WCC ammo, they also did a pretty good search around both Dallas and Irving to find out where he might've shot any. They came up empty-handed. Even they admitted he couldn't have been at the Sports Drome or other ranges - makeshift or commercial - where he was "sighted."

So where did the other 16 or so rounds go? (They came 20 to a box.)

N'Orleans is a possible source of the ammo, as is Fort Worth (which as much as it's a "different world" from Dallas today, was more so then ... and "farther away" too!). The catches with these are that Marina and Ruth drove LHO's belongings back to Dallas and would presumably have noticed the "bricks" of ammo (by weight in a concentrated volume) ... just like they'd presumably have noticed a rifle simply wrapped up in a blanket, too, no? And then, when and how did he get back and forth to Fort Worth, 30 miles away?

The likely scenarios are (assuming he ever had ammo for the gun) that he either /a/ got it from someone else, or /b/ got it at one of the two Dallas gun shops. The proprietors either /a/ simply lied, or /b/ honestly didn't remember him. Just because they didn't remember him doesn't mean he wasn't there. It only means nobody can prove he was there. If they lied, it still doesn't mean he wasn't there.

This, at least, provides for the possibility that he got his hands on the ammo, which from the sound of your next comments, is what you might've hoped to achieve. If you don't mind, I'll address those in reverse order:

This is why I personally find the question of the Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition to be so critical. From this evidence ALONE it appears that Oswald had at least one accomplice who provided him with bullets ....

From the evidence alone, it does not appear that Oswald ever had any ammo. From the evidence alone, it does not appear that there was ever a gun in the Paine garage OR in his room on Beckley. From the evidence alone, it does not appear he transported it from Irving to the TSBD that Friday morning OR that he brought it in at any other time.

Even IF someone else bought it for him and brought it to him, it likewise does not make him an "accomplice," or at least not a witting one.

... and MOST LIKELY at least one other one who either concealed or removed evidence. Doesn't it? So then the question becomes, who might have provided Oswald with ammo and why, and who might have concealed or sanitized his personal effects and why?

But...there is still the problem of only having the 4 bullets. If no other M-C ammo was ever found in his personal effects, that implies to me that either a, Oswald had some personal effects that were never examined, or b, someone tampered with his personal effects before they were examined by law enforcement.

There is also the problem of the disposition of the other 16 bullets or more, but we'll leave that aside. If there were personal effects that were never examined, then where were they? Might not someone have come forth and said "hey, that guy rented a room from me! Never showed up but once or twice a month, quick in and out, y'all might wanna check and see what's in there?" The close examination of his accounts pretty well precludes that.

Otherwise, all I can say is "some accomplice!!" Me, I'd have shot that SOB before I'd shot Tippit! Yanked my bullets from my room, but left the damned holster behind! And all this when? Sitting in the theater - for which there is no evidence - the guy says, "Gee, Ozzie, they're gonna be coming after you pretty quick, y'know. What say you sit tight right here and I'll run back to the Beckley house, hope your landlady doesn't notice me, and get your stuff. Then I'll make a quick run out to Marina's place, hope she and Ruth don't notice me, and grab your other stuff from the garage. Don't think you'll be needin' that filthy ol' blanket, do ya now, what with it being cold and all these nights lately? OK, well, meet ya back here 'round five, and stay outta trouble now, y'hear?"

And where'd this guy come from all of a sudden? Didn't pick Ozzie up downtown and there were no payphones for Ozzie to call him from, and he didn't use the phone at home, so how'd they hook up and where? In front of the house, maybe pre-arranged? Great, then why'd he drop ol' Ozzie off in the neighborhood other than just to kill a cop and draw attention to himself? And pick him up right afterward so he'd "disappear," only to leave him again in the middle of the block of the Oak Cliff business district as the cops were screaming by, then also sneak into the theater after Johnny told Julia about Ozzie, or did he just go back to Ozzie's place without him and manage to sneak in past ol' half-blind Earlene and get half of Ozzie's stuff?

One hardly "sanitizes" when he leaves incriminating evidence behind.

The one thing that you CANNOT do is to reach a conclusion and then build additional scenarios, one upon the other, to show how your conclusion is correct and might have been carried out. He had ammo; he didn't buy it, so someone else did. No extra was found, so that same person must've taken it away. And if one man couldn't have gotten it all, there must've been two or more. My goodness, half the town's out coverin' our boy's ass and still they manage to string him up! Damn, Sam!

Accomplices like that, who needs people planting evidence against 'em?

More'n likely, that young son was set up. That's a whole lot easier to explain, and using people we know existed! This dog don't belong in the hunt.

(Got it in before everyone else got up: good on me! Don't mean to berate you - it's late and I'm getting cranky - but think it through from all sides before reaching a conclusion. If something doesn't fit, it probably ain't gonna work.)

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http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/wood_s.htm

Mr. WOOD. Yes, sir; I came out there. I had-been shooting for about 10 or 15 minutes and he came up next to me and started shooting, and he only shot about 8 or 10 times and I noticed every time he got through shooting he would take the breech and open it up and put the shell in his pocket.

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What you are not entitled to do, however, is call me Mister: "Duke" will do just fine, tenk you veddy much!

O-tay, Duke it is.

As you note, it hardly seems likely that either the M-C, or the ammo, went to or came from New Orleans.

The likely scenarios are (assuming he ever had ammo for the gun) that he either /a/ got it from someone else, or /b/ got it at one of the two Dallas gun shops. The proprietors either /a/ simply lied, or /b/ honestly didn't remember him. Just because they didn't remember him doesn't mean he wasn't there. It only means nobody can prove he was there. If they lied, it still doesn't mean he wasn't there.

Even IF someone else bought it for him and brought it to him, it likewise does not make him an "accomplice," or at least not a witting one.

Good point about the "wittingess" of the "accomplice, if there was one.

Some unwitting person might have been giving LHO ammo, and/or the gun shop owners might have misremembered, and/or might actually have had a different employee help LHO, or....who knows? We could of course play the "this or that might have happened" game for a long time.

From the evidence alone, it does not appear that Oswald ever had any ammo.

Indeed - this is one of the points I was trying to find out about when I started this thread.

Maybe I should stop posting so late at night myself :lol: You're right that it is unlikely LHO had effects that were never examined or that someone sanitized his effects (unless Marina....well, never mind :lol: ) (and, I must say, there are a lot of other unlikely theories about the assassination which have been advanced since 22 Nov 1963...but I digress). Where you've lost me a bit is

There is also the problem of the disposition of the other 16 bullets or more, but we'll leave that aside.

How can we leave that aside? That's part of the whole question we're looking into in this thread. Isn't it?

I guess from your comments that we can leave that aside because

1 there's no good evidence of Oswald practicing anywhere with the M-C

2 there's no good evidence he ever had the rifle at Paine's or on Beckley

3 there's no good evidence he brought the M-C to TSBD on 11/22/63 or any other time.

So you're saying Oswald never had an M-C rifle on the 6th floor of TSBD to begin with, so the whole "how did Oswald get bullets" question is totally irrelevant?

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Mr. WOOD. Yes, sir; I came out there. I had-been shooting for about 10 or 15 minutes and he came up next to me and started shooting, and he only shot about 8 or 10 times and I noticed every time he got through shooting he would take the breech and open it up and put the shell in his pocket.

Forgive me, but I'm not sure what Sterling Wood's testimony even suggests in this context. Can you elucidate?

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... Where you've lost me a bit is
There is also the problem of the disposition of the other 16 bullets or more, but we'll leave that aside.
How can we leave that aside? That's part of the whole question we're looking into in this thread. Isn't it?

I guess from your comments that we can leave that aside because

1. there's no good evidence of Oswald practicing anywhere with the M-C

2. there's no good evidence he ever had the rifle at Paine's or on Beckley

3. there's no good evidence he brought the M-C to TSBD on 11/22/63 or any other time.

So you're saying Oswald never had an M-C rifle on the 6th floor of TSBD to begin with, so the whole "how did Oswald get bullets" question is totally irrelevant?

I guess that is the gist of it, isn't it?

No GSR on his face as would be expected of firing a rifle. No prints on the rifle except a palm print on a part that is inaccessible during the firing of the rifle. Nobody who saw him on the sixth floor near the time of the shooting (and trust me on this: there was at least one other person on the sixth floor within five minutes of the shooting, possibly within as little as two) or on that floor with a package of any sort at any time. Nobody saw him bring any package into the building. Buell Frazier and his sister both described a package that was not at all consistent with that "found" on the scene (as if that could be proved). Almost certainly no rifle at Beckley, hardly proved there was one at the Paines' (and anyway, neither Marina nor Ruth put him in the garage ... and don't start with the "blanket fibers in the bag" argument - see photo below of evidence turned over to the FBI by DPD and tell me how that might've happened!).

Items are #7 "A paper bag probably constructed from wrapping paper and tape at the TSBD,"

and #10 "Oswald's green and brown blanket from the Paine's [sic] garage in Irving.

From Jesse Curry's Personal Assassination File, pages 88-89

Photo attribution to "Dallas Police Department"

No sixth floor, no rifle, who cares about the bullets? It's only an exercise in possibilities of how something could even be possible. It's like wondering how often I've been to the Eiffel Tower if I've never been to France (but if I had been, I might've gone once!).

The disposition of the other cartridges is germane only to the extent if Oswald ever had them, then he either fired them, kept them, lost them, or gave them away. The last necessitates someone with a similar rifle to give them to; if he kept them, where are they? We might also ask, if he lost them, how does one "lose" 16 out of 20 bullets that were in a box? And if he fired them, when and where?

Tom's citation of Sterling Wood in a message above isn't an answer because the totality of his testimony - no matter how closely he thought the marksman beside him may have looked like Oswald or the rifle the man used looked like "an Italian cabine" (he was not shown C2766) - does not portray Oswald or his known circumstances, even if the Sports Drome was only five miles from his boarding house, and he wasn't in Irving the weekend described (the week before the assassination ... which also necessitates Oswald's already having the gun in Dallas then, thereby - considering his not having the means to return it to Irving - obviating the need to go out on Thursday the 21st to get it, doesn't it!).

Or, to put it another way: he was in Dallas with the gun on November 16, did not return it to Irving, then went to retrieve it from Irving on November 21. How the hell did it get to Irving? No matter. The question is whether the bag he brought in on Friday could've held the gun that wasn't in Irving. If the gun was there, then could he have had the gun in the sack? Only if Buell and Linnie Mae were mistaken ... and oh: if the gun was in Irving.

We are left to care about only one of these two things:

1) Was Oswald at the Sports Drome on Saturday? If so, then the gun wasn't in Irving on Thursday, ergo nothing about him and the bag on Friday matters; or

2) Was the gun in Irving on Thursday? If so, then it wasn't at the Sports Drome on Saturday and, while maybe the bag's important, nothing about the Sports Drome is.

Oddly, people continue to argue both, sometimes even in the same conversation!

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... Where you've lost me a bit is
There is also the problem of the disposition of the other 16 bullets or more, but we'll leave that aside.
How can we leave that aside? That's part of the whole question we're looking into in this thread. Isn't it?

I guess from your comments that we can leave that aside because

1. there's no good evidence of Oswald practicing anywhere with the M-C

2. there's no good evidence he ever had the rifle at Paine's or on Beckley

3. there's no good evidence he brought the M-C to TSBD on 11/22/63 or any other time.

So you're saying Oswald never had an M-C rifle on the 6th floor of TSBD to begin with, so the whole "how did Oswald get bullets" question is totally irrelevant?

I guess that is the gist of it, isn't it?

No GSR on his face as would be expected of firing a rifle.

No prints on the rifle except a palm print on a part that is inaccessible during the firing of the rifle.

Nobody who saw him on the sixth floor near the time of the shooting ... or on that floor with a package of any sort at any time.

Nobody saw him bring any package into the building. Buell Frazier and his sister both described a package that was not at all consistent with that "found" on the scene

Almost certainly no rifle at Beckley, hardly proved there was one at the Paines' (and anyway, neither Marina nor Ruth put him in the garage ... and don't start with the "blanket fibers in the bag" argument - see photo below of evidence turned over to the FBI by DPD and tell me how that might've happened!).

Items are #7 "A paper bag probably constructed from wrapping paper and tape at the TSBD,"

and #10 "Oswald's green and brown blanket from the Paine's [sic] garage in Irving.

From Jesse Curry's Personal Assassination File, pages 88-89

Photo attribution to "Dallas Police Department"

No sixth floor, no rifle, who cares about the bullets? It's only an exercise in possibilities of how something could even be possible. It's like wondering how often I've been to the Eiffel Tower if I've never been to France (but if I had been, I might've gone once!).

The disposition of the other cartridges is germane only to the extent if Oswald ever had them, then he either fired them, kept them, lost them, or gave them away. The last necessitates someone with a similar rifle to give them to; if he kept them, where are they? We might also ask, if he lost them, how does one "lose" 16 out of 20 bullets that were in a box? And if he fired them, when and where?

I don't think Duke is saying that that the rifle ammo question is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT. The rifle ammo evidence (i.e. the evidence suggesting that Lee Oswald never owned or possessed ammo for the rifle) is relevant to show that he was not on the Sixth floor firing a rifle when JFK was gunned down

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