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Where'd They Get Their Guns?

An Analysis of the Firearms Used in High-Profile Shootings, 1963 to 2001

Date: November 22, 1963

Location: Dealy Plaza, Dallas, Texas

Alleged Shooter: Lee Harvey Oswald

People Killed: Two

People Injured: One

Firearm(s): Italian made 2766 Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5mm rifle and a .38 revolver


Circumstances

Oswald purportedly fired the shot or shots that killed President John F. Kennedy from a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. Kennedy was killed and Texas Governor John B. Connelly was wounded. During his escape, Oswald also killed a Dallas police officer, J.D. Tippit, with the revolver. About an hour later, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater. He was never tried. Jack Ruby, a local nightclub owner with ties to organized crime, shot Oswald in the basement of a Dallas police station.


How Firearm(s) Acquired

Oswald ordered the rifle legally from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago through an advertisement in the National Rifle Association's American Rifleman magazine. The revolver was purchased legally by mail from a Los Angeles company.

 
  1. George Lardner, Jr. and Walter Pincus, "The Assassination Files: Thirty Years After JFK's Death," The Washington Post, 15 November 1993, sec. A, p. 1.
  2. Robert Greene, "JFK: The Assassination, The Conspiracies, The Obsession," The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 25 January 1992, sec. A, p. 16.
  3. Kenneth Klein, "Perspectives on Conspiracy," The Los Angeles Times," 24 December 1991, sec. B, p. 7.
  4. Robert Sherrill, The Saturday Night Special (NY: Charterhouse, 1973), 165.


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 All contents � 2001 Violence Policy Center

 


The Violence Policy Center is a national non-profit educational foundation that conducts research on violence in America and works to develop violence-reduction policies and proposals. The Center examines the role of firearms in America, conducts research on firearms violence, and explores new ways to decrease firearm-related death and injury.