When I was in the market for a hunting rifle (ultimately buying a 30-06), I was curious as to what the oft-called "thirty-odd-six" meant; I wanted to know why it was referred to as such. I quickly found-out that the designation referred to "30'caliber, 1906". I never found-out why the word "odd" was used, but I don't think that is relevant. The 30-06 round superseded the 30-03 round of 1903; a very short life for a military round.
For the purpose of this post I am just going to focus on the shape of the different bullets, the rounded 30-03 bullet vs. the pointed 30-06 "spitzer" bullet. I read that that the change to the pointed bullet was the result of a technological breakthrough that made the manufacture of the pointed round less expensive and troublesome; the knowledge of the desirability in ballistic characteristics of the pointed round having been known some time before. The technological manufacturing breakthrough is not often noted when looking into this and the improved ballistics are more often cited for the reason for the change in 1906.
It is often said that that the change or choice to or from a round to a pointed bullet has to do with the characteristics of the wounds inflicted by either round and what kind of wounds were desired on the battlefield. I don't believe that this is the case. I believe that the Italian armaments were simply tooled-up for their round nosed bullets and rifles, and that they were simply behind the times throuought the manufacturing life of the 6.5mm MC rifle and cartridge.
The point is that the round-nosed bullet was an odd-duck by the time someone bought that MC rifle as that weapon of choice for Alek Hidell.
As long as no identifiable bullets of fragments of bullets were found in the victims, the car, or elsewhere, the planting of a 6.5 mm MC round, somewhere, would narrow the scope of any investigation and field of possible perpetrators and weapons. A pointed 30-06 round, or any other pointed round, if still identifiable, would leave a much larger range of possible weapons as being suspected in the assassination. (Regardless of what Rachel Maddow reports below).
To me, this explains why several weapons were reported to have been found. Once it was clear that no identifiable, pointed Spitzer rounds were going to be recovered, all that had to be done was to get a 6.5mm round planted, and get an Alek Hidell library card to the appointed patzy. Perhaps, LHO thought he was delivering that card to someone else, as he made his way around Dallas after the shooting, or to the Texas Theater; perhaps he was duped. (Edit: I thought there was a non-photo Hidell card, but I don't see one. The point remains that a Hidell card could place blame on anyone with such a card).
I'm no expert on this stuff, but I have not seen some of my above points having been made before; so I thought I would offer them up.
Cheers,
Michael