Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Let's continue discussing the probability that fibers from Oswald's arrest shirt- worn on a previous occasion in which he handled the gun- got wedged into the butt plate. 

Now obviously, if he just handled the gun, meaning picked it up from the post office, transported it somewhere, put it in storage somewhere, there is no reason to think that shirt-fibers would get wedged in the butt plate. 

Even theoretically, for fibers to get "wedged" there, the butt plate itself would have to be pressed firmly against the shirt as in firing it. 

Look at a close-up of the back of Oswald's rifle:

The butt, of course, is the thick piece of wood for bracing against your shoulder, and the butt plate is a cap that goes over it which is usually made of metal. The butt plate is screwed onto the gun stock.

Below shows a guy removing the butt plate from a Mannlicher/Carcano rifle:

So, where would the "wedging" of shirt fibers take place? 

According to the Warren Report: "In a crevice between the butt plate of the rifle and the wooden stock was a tuft of several cotton fibers."

Above, we can see the crevice, but how could fibers get in there? Wouldn't it take a certain amount of pressure to get fibers wedged in there? Would just handling the rifle get fibers stuck in there? Why even assume that that part of the gun would even come in contact with Oswald's shirt? If they had claimed that fibers were found on the back of the plate, the part that braced against his shoulder, it's understandable that contact, firm contact, would took place, by which fibers could theoretically have been wedged in. (although I still think it's a stretch) But, the crevice they're talking about isn't in back; it's on the side. You hold the back of the rifle to your shirt; you don't hold the side of the rifle to your shirt. 

So, are they claiming that the incidental handling of the rifle, not the use of it, but just the handling of it resulted in fibers getting wedged into that crevice? Yes, that seems to be what they are suggesting. 

If this kind of thing actually happens, then it must happen a lot. Right? Therefore, we should be able to take any old rifle and find shirt fibers wedged in the crevice between the butt plate and the stock. Or we should be able to give a guy a rifle, have him handle it a while- just carrying it, moving it from here to there- and then find fibers from his shirt wedged in the crevice. 

But, I seriously doubt it. Why should handling a gun drive, force, press fibers into that crevice? 

But, returning to the Warren Report:

"The Commission has concluded that the fibers in the tuft on the rifle most probably came from the shirt worn by Oswald when he was arrested, and that this was the same shirt which Oswald wore on the morning of the assassination. Marina Oswald testified that she thought her husband wore this shirt to work on that day. The testimony of those who saw him after the assassination was inconclusive about the color of Oswald's shirt,72 but Mary Bledsoe, a former landlady of Oswald, saw him on a bus approximately 10 minutes after the assassination and identified the shirt as being the one worn by Oswald primarily because of a distinctive hole in the shirt's right elbow. 73 Moreover, the bus transfer which he obtained as he left. the bus was still in the pocket when he was arrested."

"Although Oswald returned to his rooming house after the assassination and when questioned by police claimed to have changed his shirt,75 the evidence indicates that he continued wearing the same shirt which he was wearing all morning and which he was still wearing when arrested."

Cinque: Note that when first asked about it by Fritz, Oswald said he only changed his "britches". 

"In light of these findings the Commission evaluated the additional testimony of Stombaugh that the fibers were caught in the crevice of the rifle's butt plate "in the recent past."76 Although Stombaugh was unable to estimate the period of time the fibers were on the rifle he said that the fibers "were clean, they had good color to them, there was no grease on them and they were not fragmented. They looked as if they had just been picked up." 77 The relative freshness of the fibers is strong evidence that they were caught on the rifle on the morning of the assassination or during the preceding evening."

Cinque: They went on to say that the rifle had not been handled at all for 8 weeks prior to the assassination, that it just lay in a blanket in Mrs. Paine's garage and was never handled by Oswald. So, if fibers from that shirt got onto that rifle from a previous day, it had to be prior to September 23- two months before. 

How airy is it to speculate that maybe Oswald wore that shirt and handled the rifle MONTHS before and that fibers from it got wedged in the crevice on the side of the rifle and persisted until November 22?

People, we are in the Bizarro World here. There is no evidence that Oswald EVER ordered that rifle. There is no evidence that Oswald EVER handled that rifle. And there is no evidence that handling such a rifle would cause shirt-fibers to get wedged in a crevice on the side of the rifle. The whole thing is just a bunch of bull. The Warren Commission was full of crap, and Duncan MacRae is just adding his own crap to it. Oswald was innocent. He was standing in the doorway during the shooting. He never in his life saw, touched, handled or had anything whatsoever to do with that rifle. Period.