It’s been over sixty years since that sunny Friday in Dallas, but the question of who shot John F. Kennedy still feels like a raw nerve in American history. Honestly, you’ve probably seen the Zapruder film—that grainy, horrifying 8mm loop of a limousine turning onto Elm Street. It’s the most analyzed piece of film in existence. Yet, despite the thousands of pages written by the Warren Commission and the endless documentaries on cable TV, most people you talk to at a bar or a dinner party still don't buy the official story.
Basically, the "official" version is that Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former Marine and self-described Marxist, fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. One missed. One hit the President and Governor John Connally. The third was the fatal head shot. Oswald was arrested in a movie theater about 80 minutes later, not for killing the President, but for the murder of a Dallas police officer named J. D. Tippit. Two days later, while the whole country watched on live television, a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby walked up and killed Oswald in the basement of the police station.
Case closed? Not really.
The Man Behind the Scope: Lee Harvey Oswald
Oswald is a weird character. He wasn't your typical high-profile assassin. He had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, lived in Minsk, married a Russian woman named Marina, and then just... came back to the States. By 1963, he was back in Texas, working a $1.25-an-hour job filling book orders.
Most experts agree he owned the weapon: a 6.5 mm Italian Carcano M91/38 carbine he bought via mail order for $19.95. The FBI and the Warren Commission concluded he acted entirely alone. They looked at 25,000 interviews. They followed tens of thousands of leads. Their conclusion was a 888-page "no conspiracy" verdict.
But then there's the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1979. They threw a wrench in everything. While they agreed Oswald fired the shots that hit Kennedy, they concluded there was a "high probability" that two gunmen actually fired. This was based on acoustic evidence from a police motorcycle microphone that supposedly caught four shots. Later scientific reviews have debunked that specific audio, but the damage to the "lone gunman" narrative was done.
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The Single Bullet and the Grassy Knoll
If you want to understand why people doubt the official story of who shot John F. Kennedy, you have to look at the "Magic Bullet Theory." This is the idea that one bullet (Commission Exhibit 399) passed through Kennedy's neck, then through Governor Connally's chest and wrist, and finally embedded itself in the Governor's thigh.
Critics say it’s impossible. They point to the Zapruder film and say Kennedy and Connally react at different times. They point to the "grassy knoll"—that small hill in front of the car—and swear a second shooter was there.
There’s also the autopsy. It was a mess. It was conducted at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and the doctors there weren't forensic pathologists experienced in gunshot wounds. They missed things. They didn't even see the throat wound initially because it had been obscured by a tracheotomy performed at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. This kind of incompetence fuels the "cover-up" fire. It’s hard to tell the difference between a government that’s hiding a conspiracy and a government that’s just really bad at its job.
Was There a Second Gunman?
The HSCA was critical of the original investigation. They said the Warren Commission failed to adequately investigate a conspiracy. They looked at the Mafia. They looked at anti-Castro Cubans. They looked at the CIA.
In the end, they didn't name a second person. They just said it was "probable."
- The Mafia: Some believe Carlos Marcello or Sam Giancana ordered the hit because Robert Kennedy was cracking down on organized crime.
- The CIA: Theories suggest rogue elements were upset with Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs failure.
- The Soviets/Cubans: Oswald’s ties to the USSR and his pro-Castro activities in New Orleans (the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee") are suspicious to many.
But here is the thing: no physical evidence—no second rifle, no second shell casing, no second set of fingerprints—has ever been found to link anyone else to the trigger.
Why the Controversy Never Dies
Public opinion polls are wild. Even in 2023 and 2024, polls like YouGov and Gallup show that over 50% to 60% of Americans believe Oswald didn't act alone. Why?
Part of it is the trauma. Kennedy was young, vibrant, and represented a "Camelot" era of hope. To think he was taken out by one lonely, disgruntled guy with a cheap mail-order rifle feels... wrong. It’s a mismatch of cause and effect. We want a big, complex conspiracy to match the magnitude of the loss.
Also, the government didn't help itself. The CIA withheld info about their own plots to kill Fidel Castro. They didn't tell the Warren Commission about Oswald’s visit to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City just weeks before the shooting. When the government hides some things, we assume they are hiding everything.
The Real Legacy of Dealey Plaza
The assassination changed the country in ways that aren't just about politics. It led directly to the 25th Amendment, which finally cleared up how a Vice President takes over and how a new VP is appointed. It also marked the moment America lost its "innocence."
Before November 22, 1963, most people got their news from the evening paper. That weekend, everyone stayed glued to the TV. We saw the news process happen in real-time—the confusion, the conflicting reports, and eventually, the murder of the suspect himself. It changed how we consume information forever.
How to Look at the Evidence Today
If you want to get a real handle on the facts of who shot John F. Kennedy, you have to separate the ballistics from the "vibe."
- Read the Warren Report, but with a grain of salt. It’s the baseline, but acknowledge its limitations in forensic detail.
- Examine the HSCA findings. They provide the best counter-argument regarding a potential conspiracy, even if their acoustic evidence is now contested.
- Visit the Sixth Floor Museum. Seeing the "sniper’s nest" in person makes the distances and angles much more real than a map on a screen.
- Look into the JFK Records Act. Since the 1990s, millions of pages of documents have been released. Most are mundane, but they show the inner workings of the FBI and CIA at the time.
The reality is that we may never have a "smoking gun" that satisfies everyone. History is messy. People make mistakes, records get lost, and sometimes, the most significant events in human history are caused by the most insignificant people.
To dig deeper into the actual documentation, you can browse the National Archives' JFK Assassination Records Collection. They have digitized thousands of documents, including the original FBI reports and the autopsy photos that were once kept secret. Reading the raw files is often more revealing than any theory you'll find on a forum.