Brady, your cousin is full of it. The main reason police are unable to match bullets is because of destruction to the bullet from whatever it hit. Obviously many bullets are almost destroyed by impact. The recent sniper incident up in Virginia is a classic example. Police recovered mostly fragmented bullets.

And 22 bullets are matched all the time. Cast or jacketed, they can do it if the bullet isn't deformed too badly.

That's a crock! I have personally seen the bullet that was on Connally's stretcher. It very definitely has rifling marks on it! And, it WAS matched to Oswald's rifle!! At least THAT particular bullet was fired by Oswald! BTW, steel-jacketed bullets are engraved by the rifling. Steel used for bullet jackets is always milder than the steel used for rifle barrels! Otherwise, it would not be safe to fire them.

PH: When you say "standard military RN ball ammo with copper jacket ", do you mean non-steel jacketed, or do you mean steel-jacketed with a copper cladding? Brady

There have been so many documentaries with 'truths' , theories, half-truths, lies and innuendo that the true course of events will never be known.

The 6.5 Carcano ammo that Oswald used was produced by Winchester as a small run for who knows what reason. It was standard military RN ball ammo with copper jacket and lead core.

And I thought Oswald 'shot' the police officer with a .38 Special. I need to check the Warren Commission report-it is probably the best available document pertaining to the event. As time goes by the actual events will become more and more distorted. Plateau Hunter

Thanks for all the replies. Your guys comments pretty much confirm what I suspected. I think my cousin (who is actually a pretty nice guy, just opinionated) was just basing his comments on the fact that most military bullets are steel-jacketed and most steel that we commonly come in contact with is pretty hard.

I wish we the people could have more input to investigations like this. I have watched several programs on the assassination and not heard these answers.

I also think that members of a jury should be allowed to ask questions. I sat on a jury where I thought one attorney was incompetent and wished that I could ask questions myself. I did hear of one judge somewhere who did allow written questions from the jury.

Thanks again, Brady

A cousin of mine and I were talking at a family reunion and the discussion got to the murder of JFK. I saw on the History Channel that none of the bullets recovered could be matched to Oswald's rifle. My cousin maintained that steel-jacketed bullets were not engraved by the rifling enough to be matched to the rifling. It seems to me that the outer surface of the bullet would have to be soft enough to obturate, so would be engraved by the rifling.

Also, it said that the bullets recovered from Officer Tibbets could not be matched to the revolver Oswald had at the time he was arrested in the movie theater. Does anyone know why they could not be matched?

I did see another program about a different case where they said that the recovered bullet (.22 rimfire) could not be matched to the weapon because the soft lead bullet was too distorted.

I don't want to start any sort of argument about conspiracy theories; I just want to know if anyone can shed any light on how difficult it is to match up bullets and firearms in these situations.

TIA, Brady

Rifle bullets are tough to work with. Often the barrels are pretty smooth inside. In order to match a bullet to a gun you need to see a number of individual characteristics common on the test fired and the unknown. These are usually fine lines called stria. Another factor could be the high pressure gas leaking past the bullet and eroding the surface.

This is especially true of lead handgun bullets. In the case of the 38 Special bullets I would bet they were 158 grain lead round nose. Those are really tough. The gas tends to leak past lead bullets leaving an eroded surface. This removes the stria needed to match the bullets to the test fired ammo. Even getting the tests to match is often a problem.

Jacketed handgun bullets are easier. Seems like they stand up better to the gas blow by. It depends on the gun used. If the bore is oversized you can have problems.

So, all I can say is that for may reasons you may not be able to match a bullet to a gun. It is not a conspiricy, just frustrating. Doing the work in a real laboratory is not the same as CSI or the movies. They select the best possible examples for the camera. Normally is is much more subtle and would not make for good TV.

Richochet is right. If no marks were left it would mean that the bullet is not engaging the rifling and the rifling could not do its job. Those 6.5's are way to accurate to have usless rifling. Ive recovered some 8X57 fmj ammo that has beautifull spiral cuts in it.

Any single projectile coming out of a rifled barrel will have "rifling marks" regardless of the composition of the projectile.