Oswalds 38 Cal snub nose revolver

G

GaryED50

New member
I'm only wondering about the weapon itself but one of the things I've read about over the years is Oswalds revolver could not be 100 percent tied to the death it caused due to the revolver originaly being chambered for 38 S&W and had been rechambered to 38 S&W Special. The 38 special bullet didn't engage the rifling completely like the 38 S&W did.



I'm assuming this means the cylinder had been altered to the new cartridge but the barrel wasn't

did S&W do this or was it a 3rd party?

Gary
 
The gun was a butchered Victory Model. I doubt if the slightly over sized bore would make ballistics matching impossible. But as g said above, there is nothing about the JFK killing that can be trusted. All evidence was tampered with, witnesses intimidated, testimony altered, massive cover up.
 
Sticking to the hardware

From you guys I've learned that the 38 S&W is generally about .360 in diameter while the 38 S&W Special is usually .356-357. If this conversion was being done a lot they had to know it would affect accuracy

Gary
 
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It was common to rechamber the British chambered firearms to 38 Special. No they were not the most accurate guns after being rechambered but they weren't all that bad. The fact that the 38 Special brass was bulged and difficult { if not impossible } to reload was the worst part.. Many of those guns are still being shot today with acceptable accuracy.
 
The difference in groove diameter between the .38 S&W and the .38 Special is small, but there is just enough to make bullet identification less than 100%. Given the situation, I suspect the firearms identification folks just didn't want to go on the record with a 90% probability - they wanted to be certain and they weren't. Also, the condition of the bullets could have prevented that 100% certainty.

Realistically, how many .38 revolvers were being fired at the police at that place, at that day, at that hour, and at that minute? Only a conspiracy theorist would claim that failure of 100% identification of the bullets somehow proves that some gun other than Oswald's revolver was used.

Jim
 
"The gun was a butchered Victory Model."

That's what I've always head, as well.

In the 1950s and 1960s British companies began "converting" the .380/200 revolver to .38 Special by reaming out the cylinder. Because the .380 cartridge was a bit larger, .38 Special cases will invariably bulge on firing.

I THINK Parker Hale was the biggest perverter.... er... converter, but I've also heard that Cogswell & Harrison marked guns are known.

Ah, yes. Here's a TFL thread on a gun so marked: http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=162242
 
C&H did that work for Interarmco because Sam Cummings owned C&H at the time. But not all of that work was done in England; if it was, the guns had to be (re)proved for the new caliber and the proof marks will show that. Some of those reworks were done in CA for Golden State.

Jim
 
I guess it was a less expensive way to revive a bunch of product that otherwise would have died along with an obsolete cartridge

Gary
 
Howdy

I clearly remember a few days after the assassination there were articles in the local newspaper about the Oswald revolver and how it had been purchased mail order. In those days it was still possible to have a handgun shipped through the mail. I thought I remembered the gun cost $12, but I guess my memory is a little hazy on that detail.

Anyway, when my Dad saw these articles he said that it couldn't have been a S&W because Smiths were expensive guns. Yeah, Dad was wrong. Anyway, I just came across some old S&W catalog information, and in 1963 a brand new Model 10, the successor to the Victory Model, cost $65 blue, $70 nickel plated.
 
Oswald's revolver was purchased, like his rifle, by mail order; that was the main excuse (not reason, excuse) for GCA '68 banning mail order gun sales, something the antis had been trying to do for over 20 years. The '68 law also banned importation and sale of military surplus firearms; it was later amended to allow imports of C&R milsurps.

FYI, the part about banning milsurp imports was written by Winchester's lawyers, aided and abetted by Sen. Tom Dodd, an anti-gun crusader who was owned and operated by Winchester and the Olins, who thought milsurps hurt the company's gun sales. (The real competition was Remington, but they wouldn't admit that, and blamed all those evil surplus guns. Naturally, they made much of Oswald's use of a milsurp rifle, not so much the revolver which was an American product.)

GCA '68 also changed the import marking law on guns from the original "Country of Origin" mark (still in effect for other products) to require that imported guns carry a marking with the name of the importer. The reason was that tracing the Carcano to the retailer took several days in that pre-computer era.

Jim
 
Firing distance

As I recalled it Ruby was pretty close to Oswald and he could have killed him with a well aimed 32. Not trusting my memory, I looked at the YouTube video and it looks like 3 feet max.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n9VQ-dXrwQ

BTW, Rubys brother brought the gun to DC a few years after the event, got busted under their gun law and then somehow got it back. It was sold for $250,000.

Strange series of events, almost like an X-File.:)
 
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