If everything that the prosecution in this case says is true, one must conclude that Oswald behaved in a very, very unusual manner from the beginning to the end.
He decided on Thursday, November 21, that he was going to assassinate the President, and so he decided to go back to Irving, Tex., to secure a rifle there, in order to carry out that purpose. He had on his person some $13 when arrested, and almost $150 in cash in the top drawer of his dresser—so we can assume that on Thursday, the 21st, he had roughly that amount of money present.
One can purchase a rifle for less than $13 in many stores in Dallas. There is no question about that. By using a small portion of that $150, he could have purchased a rifle absolutely superior to the Italian carbine at home in Irving in many respects. And there are gun magazines which have had editorials dwelling on this question, saying that if Oswald did it with this weapon, and they do not move into the question of whether or not he did, it was an absolute miracle, because no one who knew anything about rifles would have chosen such a decrepit, worthless rifle, as this Italian carbine, manufactured in 1938, for which there is such pure ammunition. There are a series, I believe, of editorials in gun magazines proving that Oswald, I think, as a matter of pride, from a sportsman's viewpoint—that Oswald was in no way associated with weapons and did not belong in that category, because he could not have chosen such a weapon.
Representative Ford. Could you give us the citations of one of these magazines?
Mr. Lane. Yes. One is called Gun Magazine. I do not recall the names. But that is one of them. I am sure there was such an editorial in that one. I will get the other one and mail those to you also.
But I think there would have to be a more compelling reason for Oswald not to go home and get that particular inferior rifle if he decided on Thursday to kill the President. That was the only rifle in the whole world probably that could be traced to him. One can purchase a rifle in almost any community in this country, certainly in Dallas, without any notoriety attaching to it, without giving one's name or address, or having a serial number attached to a receipt kept by a store indicating who owns that particular rifle.
But here we have Oswald going home to get an inferior rifle, which rifle is the only rifle in the whole world which can be traced to him, which rifle he is going to leave behind as a calling card after the assassination is complete.
And so he goes home to Irving, Tex., and he gets this rifle, and he wraps it up in paper, we are told, and brings it in to the Book Depository Building.
Now, the rifle can be broken down, I believe, from examining other Italian carbines. But it would be not much shorter if it was broken down—perhaps 6 or 7 inches shorter. Evidently, though, he did not do that.
So he took this rifle into the book depository building, which I suggest, gentlemen, is a most remarkable thing. This was going to be the greatest series of precautions in the history of the United States to protect an American President. As we know now, and suspected then, with very good reason, because of the nature of what had gone before, with reference to public officials in Dallas—and here we have a man who has defected to the Soviet Union, who has married a Russian national, active on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, we see a discharge less than honorable from the U.S. Marine Corps, who was working in the building exactly on the Presidential route. Not only is it on the Presidential route, but it is the building where the automobile is going to have to clearly slow down because of the sharp turn, sharp left turn, made right in front of the building.