Mannlicher-Carcano Clip

[Richard Booth]

The McAdams LN site has a page that derisively says writers have "huffed and puffed" about the Mannlicher-Carcano's clip being missing. The page includes a photo which shows the clip is inside the rifle when it's being carried by Lt. Day.

What McAdams' page fails to cover is this:

The clip holds six rounds. The rifle was found with one round inside of it, and 3 shell casings on the floor.

This indicates that the rifle's clip only had four rounds put into it.

Who fills an ammunition clip with only four rounds?

In addition, how come zero 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle ammunition was ever found by the FBI?  

John Armstrong writes:

"the ammunition clip had been loaded with only four cartridges instead of six .... but why load only 4 bullets into a rifle if you are going to kill the President? No other 6.5 mm cartridges were found in the Book Depository, nor on Oswald's person, nor among his possessions, nor at his rooming house, nor in Ruth Paine's garage, nor anywhere. Neither the Dallas Police nor FBI ever located an ammunition box or a receipt for the purchase of 6.5 mm ammunition."

This shows that some aspects of this plot were not well thought out. 

Had this been well thought out, that clip would have had two bullets still in it. Had this been well thought out, a box of ammo would have been recovered from Ruth Paine's garage.

This entire thing was a sloppy mess, starting with the murder weapon.

 

[Richard Booth]

51 minutes ago, Jeff Royle said:

Richard,

Those are very good points.  I wish I had some answers for you.  All I can say is that I doubt the Carcano was useful for anything due to the fact that it was in poor condition and the scope was misaligned to the point of being worthless.

Well yes, it was a piece of garbage.

I used to own a firearm, a Glock pistol which I owned for home defense. I went to range about once a month. I never, in my life, ever, considered putting just 4 bullets in the magazine. I doubt anyone who owns a firearm or has used a firearm would ever put just four spare bullets in a magazine. 

In fact, some weapons will not even properly hold less than the maximum number of rounds when you hand load the magazine.

I don't know if the Carcano is one of these, but I have asked Craig Roberts what he thinks of the notion someone would load 4 spare bullets into a magazine.

How difficult would it have been to fill the mag and then drop a box of ammo at Paine's garage?  Pretty easy!

Whomever did this just did not think certain things through. The mag is an example of that. 

[Richard Booth]

Craig Roberts told me that the Mannlicher-Carcacno rifle clip will NOT remain in place attached to the rifle when the clip is empty.

He said an empty clip will fall right out of the rifle, and therefore there is a major problem with McAdams' photograph of Lt. Day where it supposedly shows a clip attached to the rifle.

Here is a video of Craig Roberts which shows you that the clip falls right out of the rifle if you try to attach it without ammo in it:

 

Here is the photo that supposedly shows Lt. Day with the rifle, with a clip showing attached. It looks all wrong and shouldn't be there:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/images/day_clip.gif

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 6, 2020 by Richard Booth

[Richard Booth]

This photo that McAdams claims shows a clip in the rifle is "off"

Here is why:

The rifle's strap is in the foreground, and we are to believe that this clip extends about 4 inches and goes below where the strap is. It's far too wide to be the ammo clip, and what's more: the clip will not stay in place with no ammo in it. It falls right out of the rifle.

I think what we see in this picture is a shadow, not a clip:

 

Edited September 6, 2020 by Richard Booth

[Richard Booth]

No ammunition clip visible in this photo, it would fall out of the rifle anyway when all the bullets in it were expended:

Edited September 6, 2020 by Richard Booth

[Richard Booth]

No ammo clip visible in this photo:

 

 

[Richard Booth]

Very good piece on this subject:

 

THE GUN THAT DIDN'T SMOKE*

Walter F. Graf and Richard R. Bartholomew

http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n2/gtds.html

 

[Dan Troyer]

Here's another pic, with the "supposed" clip in a non-blackened in state.  And yes, it is a slight different view, as the man straight in back, with neck tie, is now facing them. 

[Ron Bulman]

The clip has come up in other threads about the rifle in the past.  About it being missing in the Day photos, falling out when empty, not found at the scene.  Is the bigger question why no one was asking where's the clip on day one?  Specifically, Oswald.  We found your rifle, the shells, where's your clip?

Because they had their man, they had his rifle (clip or not), the shells, his pistol.  He was a Communist.  Then he was dead.  Case closed.  

Did anyone on the Warren Omission ever notice the missing clip or question it.

[Richard Booth]

17 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Did anyone on the Warren Omission ever notice the missing clip or question it.

Well, from what I can tell the WC did not consider the clip to be missing as there was a photograph of the clip which was one of their exhibits.

The WC assertion is that the clip was found at the crime scene, and we have the photos of Lt. Day holding the rifle and it has a clip in it.

The big problem here is that rifle should not have had a clip in it, in those photos. What should have happened is the clip falls out onto the floor once the last round is chambered in the weapon. We see in the photos of the rifle being recovered and held up high that there is no clip in it--which is what we would expect.

The problems then are:

1) 4 bullets put in the clip instead of 6: makes no sense at all

2) No clip in the rifle when it's found and photographed (as expected) but then later a clip is jammed in the rifle when Lt. Day carries the rifle out of the building

3) No fingerprints recovered on that clip by DPD, however had Oswald put 4 bullets into that clip and snipped it into the rifle it is highly probable his fingerprints would have been on it

It seems from the photos we can conclude that before Lt. Day left the building carrying the rifle by it's strap someone bent the clip in such a way that it could be loaded into the magazine and would remain in place with no bullets in it. I say this because if you do not bend the clip or otherwise muddle with it, if you try and stick it into the magazine when it's empty it will fall right out onto the floor.

The biggest and most obvious thing here to me is the conclusion that we can reach about there only having been 4 bullets put into that clip. It is beyond absurd: no one puts 4 bullets into a clip, if you do, the bullets slide around and you have to be very careful when loading the clip into the magazine. This fact alone tells me this was not well thought out and assuming there was a conspiracy what they should have down is loaded a full clip (6 bullets), fired three from the rifle and recovered the shell casings, loaded one round into the chamber, leaving the rifle with a clip still attached with two bullets remaining in the clip, inside the magazine. That this was not done tells me this thing was sloppy and it tells me Oswald didn't fire that rifle. 

Posner asserts in his book that the 4 bullets in the magazine is a testament to how "unprepared Oswald was" which is absurd, of course: we are to believe that Oswald purchased 4 bullets alone, not a box of bullets, and he loaded those 4 bullets into the clip instead of 6, and that he was such a damn good shot he knew he only needed 3 or 4 rounds? I'm not buying it. 

[Richard Booth]

18 hours ago, Jeff Royle said:

I thought the Carcano clip loads from the top of the rifle, not the bottom.  In addition, something that is related to these rifles but not directly to the post is that I read somewhere that Carcano surplus rifles sometimes shared the same serial number.  So it is quite possible there are more Carcano rifles out in the world that bear the same serial number as the one Oswald supposedly used to shoot JFK.  

Watch Craig Roberts' Mannlicher Carcano mechanics video. He is shown putting an empty clip into the magazine from the top and the bottom both and it falling out both ways when the clip is empty.

The proper way to load the clip into the magazine is from the top, with bullets inside the clip. If no bullets are in the clip you can try to put it into the rifle from the top or the bottom and it makes no difference: without bullets in the clip it will fall out of the magazine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFltACBVwuQ&t=830s

So to answer your question, yes, you do load a full clip into the magazine from the top of the weapon, and a clip should not ever in any way be hanging out of the bottom if that clip is empty.  If the clip is not empty, it will remain secured inside the magazine which is to say, inside the rifle's assembly. 

[Richard Booth]

Other problems that arise concerning the clip:

1) It was not sold with the weapon, and we have no receipts or evidence anywhere which shows Oswald purchased a clip

2) We have no receipts or evidence of any kind that show Oswald had ammunition for this rifle. No box of bullets found anywhere.

 

[Richard Booth]

18 minutes ago, Jeff Royle said:

Richard,

Thanks for the follow-up.  So, if I'm understanding you correctly the police should have found three shell casings in the TSBD and a clip with one round still in the clip.  Is that right?

Assuming that rifle fired three shots and that a round was chambered into the rifle and left un-fired, this is what they should have found IF THE CLIP WAS FILLED TO CAPACITY (six rounds) as any reasonable person would do, anyone who has ever used a rifle would fill the clip to capacity. So this is what SHOULD have happened to sell this:

The police should have recovered a M-C rifle with a clip still inside of it with two rounds in that clip. 

A] three bullets fired B] one bullet in the rifle ready to fire C] two bullets in the clip, with the clip secure inside the rifle - for a total of six bullets.

As it is, we're expected to believe that Oswald loaded four bullets into the clip, fired three bullets, chambered the final round, which would then make the clip empty and cause it to fall out of the rifle. We are also to believe that the rifle both had no clip in it (as expected) when pictures were taken of the rifle when it was found, but then somehow an empty clip magically appears and can be seen extended below the rifle as Lt. Day walks out of the building with it. The problem here is that clip would fall out of the rifle when empty and it would not be suspended, visible hanging out of the magazine as we see in the Lt. Day photographs.

We're also supposed to believe that Oswald only had four bullets, and he never did buy a box of bullets nor did he load the clip with six rounds. 

The whole thing is a mess...

Edited September 7, 2020 by Richard Booth

[Richard Booth]

Note here if you only put four bullets into the clip, the bullets are not secure in-place and will slide around. If you tried to put only four bullets in the clip, you'd have to pinch on it and hold it firmly when loading that clip into the magazine. See these screenshots to see how a MC clip with only four bullets in it would leave the bullets sliding around and not firmly in-place:

 

 

[Richard Booth]

59 minutes ago, Jeff Royle said:

Richard,

Thanks.  I appreciate your take on all of this.  What's your take on the pistol Oswald supposedly used to kill Tippit but wouldn't fire in the theatre.  Is that odd to you as well as it is to me?

I don't know a lot about the pistol. So my take on that won't be very well informed.

Having said that: I do know that shell casings were recovered from the Tippit murder scene and what stands out to me here is that means -- if Oswald supposedly did it -- he opened up his revolver, pulled out the shells, and threw them on the ground.

The way a revolver works is the shell casings remain inside of the spindle on the revolver. They are not ejected as with an automatic weapon.

So, does this make sense: you shoot a cop, then you open your revolver, pull out the shell casings, and dump them at the scene? It's absurd.

But then, a wallet was supposedly found at the crime scene. So we're to believe Oswald opened up his revolver, pulled out shell casings, dumped them at the scene, then he throws his wallet on the ground for good measure?

How dumb do these people think we are? Evidently, pretty dumb...