The FBI's fib about the Mannlicher Carcano

[Bob Prudhomme]

If I'm not mistaken the engineer at Klein's said he did not put scopes on the 40 inch Carcano...

All Carcano rifles, whether they are carbines, short rifles or long rifles, have identical receivers on them; meaning that a bolt from a carbine can be inserted and used in a long or short rifle.

He may not have mounted a scope on a 40 inch short rifle but, after mounting scopes on the 36 inch carbines, he would certainly have had the knowledge to mount scopes on 40 inch rifles.

The main point here is that SOMEONE mounted a scope on C2766 and, in my opinion, did not do a very good job of it. As the FBI admitted, this rifle was shooting nearly 36 inches high at 100 yards when they first received it.

To explain this, and to make it appear the rifle was, pre-assassination, accurate enough to allow Oswald to assassinate JFK, the story was concocted that the scope must have been "bumped" at some point after the assassination, throwing the scope off and making it shoot high. This is, of course, utter nonsense. I have had rifle scopes thrown out of adjustment by rough handling but, it has never been by more than an inch or two.

Now, if the scope tube had actually been bent, there story might just have been believable. HOWEVER, they blew it and showed themselves as prevaricators when they claimed they were able to adjust this "bumped" scope to the point it was only shooting 2.5 to 5 inches high at 100 yards. That cheap pellet gun scope simply did not have enough of a range of adjustment to bring it down that much from shooting almost 36 inches high at 100 yards. It would have either been necessary to re-bend the scope tube (good luck) or shim the front end of the scope mount in order to raise the front of the scope mount. The last was, of course, impossible, and raising the front of the scope mount would have involved drilling and tapping for threads a new mounting hole in the rifle's receiver.