On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated using a 6.5×52mm Carcano Model 38 rifle.

In March 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, using the alias "A. Hidell", purchased by mail order the infantry carbine (described by the Warren Commission as a "Mannlicher–Carcano") with a telescopic sight. He also purchased a revolver from a different company, by the same method. The Hidell alias was determined from multiple sources to be Oswald.Warren Commission Report, pp. 567–571. Oswald fired the rifle from the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas, mortally wounding Kennedy as his presidential motorcade drove by on November 22, 1963, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time. Photographs of Oswald holding the rifle, a palmprint found upon examination of the rifle, and detective work tracing its sale, all eventually led to Oswald.Warren Commission Report, pp. 122–123. Marina Oswald later testified she was told by Lee that the rifle was also used before in an attempt to assassinate retired U.S. Army General Edwin Walker in Dallas.

History of the Carcano rifle The Oswald rifle is an Italian Fucile di Fanteria (Eng: Infantry rifle) Modello 91/38 (Model 1891/1938) manufactured at the Royal Arms Factory in Terni, (Regia fabbrica d'armi di Terni), Italy, in 1940. The stamp of the royal crown and "Terni" identifies this manufacturing site. Its serial number identified it as the single weapon of its type made with that number. The so-called Model 91 bolt-action rifle had been introduced in 1891 by Salvatore Carcano for the Turin Army Arsenal. After 1895, the Modello 91 used an en bloc ammunition clip similar (but not identical) to the Austrian Mannlicher ammunition clips, and hence the names of Mannlicher and Carcano came to be associated with the Oswald rifle; this included association with them by the Warren Commission. The ammunition used in the clip was the 6.5×52mm Cartuccia Modello 1895 rimless cartridge (designed in 1890), also sometimes called Mannlicher–Carcano ammunition, after the rifle designer and the general type of clip it used.

In 1938, the basic Model 91 long rifle design was discontinued in favor of a new short rifle design, the Model 38, with a new type of ammunition: a spitzer-pointed 7.35×51mm round. The 7.35mm M38 was manufactured from 1938 to 1940. In 1940, with World War II well under way and unable to stockpile sufficient amounts of 7.35×51mm ammunition, the short rifles were re-designated Modello 91/38, and were again manufactured to fire the original round-nosed 6.5×52mm ammunition. The serial-numbered C2766 rifle, sent to Oswald as a surplus advertised "Italian carbine" in 1963, was a short infantry rifle of this type, manufactured for the 6.5×52mm cartridge. This 6.5mm Carcano M91/38 was only manufactured for two years, 1940–1941, and discontinued in favor of a new 6.5mm long rifle, the M91/41, which was made until the end of the war.

The C2766 rifle was included in a surplus lot sold by the Italian Army, through a tender, to the New York company Adam Consolidated Industries. Before its shipment to New York Harbor in September 1960, the rifles were refurbished in Storo, Trentino at the Riva plant (which worked for the Beretta Group).Maurizio Gentilini, Kennedy, Giulio e il fucile di Storo, "L'Adige" 23.11.2013

Purchase of the revolver On October 9, 1962, Lee Harvey Oswald rented post office box number 2915 in Dallas, Texas.Warren Commission Report, pp. 118–119, 185. On January 27, 1963, Oswald used this PO box and the name "A. J. Hidell" to order a snub-nosed Smith & Wesson "Victory" Model .38 Special revolver from Seaport Traders of Los Angeles for $29.95 () plus postage and handling. Seaport Traders shipped the pistol cash-on-delivery by rail on March 20 but due to policies to prevent shipping firearms to minors, Oswald was required to pick it up in-person at the Railway Express Agency offices in Dallas.The Killing of Patrolman J.D. Tippit: Ownership of Revolver , Warren Commission Report, p. 174.

Purchase of the Carcano

On March 12, 1963, Oswald placed his second mail-order: this time it was for the mentioned "6.5 Italian Carbine" from Klein's Sporting Goods located in Chicago, as advertised in the February 1963 American Rifleman. Using the alias "Alek Hidell", a variation of the "A.J. Hidell" alias employed to purchase the Smith & Wesson pistol five weeks earlier, Oswald purchased the rifle (model not given in the advertisement), complete with an attached new 4x telescopic sight, for $19.95 () plus $1.50 shipping. (The rifle alonewithout the scopewas priced at $12.78.) Like the handgun, this was also shipped to Oswald at his post office box in Dallas, also on March 20.Ownership and Possession of Assassination Weapon , Warren Commission Report, pp. 118–119.

The rifle portrayed in the ad and the rifle Oswald received were not the same. Klein's Sporting Goods had initially shipped surplus Carcano model M91 TS carbines ("moschettos") under their "Italian carbine" ad. However, effective April 13, 1962, Crescent Firearms, the wholesale supplier of Italian rifles to Klein's, had been unable to supply Carcano TS carbines, and had switched to surplus Carcano M91/38's,Well-referenced discussion of Klein's Carcanos Accessed April 27, 2017 which fired the same 6.5 x 52mm ammunition. The M91/38 rifles were a slightly longer version of the short infantry Carcano TS and had a barrel rather than the barrel of the TS carbine model. They also had a completely left-side-mounted sling rather than the under-stock sling of the TS. Thus, while Oswald got a slightly longer M91/38, which was not quite the same Italian rifle shown in the advertisement photograph (the ad photo was not changed until April 1963), he did get a very similar telescope-modified Italian 6.5 mm short rifle.Switch in models sold to Klein's This is Waldman Exhibit I. Taken from Warren Commission Report XXI page 692. The difference between the 36" M91 TS shown in the ad with bottom-mounted sling, and the 40" M91/38 rifle with side-mounted sling used in the assassination, has caused confusion.

Oswald asked his wife Marina in late March to take several photographs of him posing in their backyard with the rifle and pistol and holding copies of the newspapers The Worker and The Militant.Warren Commission Report, pp. 125–128. Three of the photographs were discovered among Oswald's belongings on November 23.Testimony of Richard S. Stovall , Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 7, p. 194.The third photograph disappeared while in the possession of the Dallas Police, before the photographs were transferred to the FBI in late November 1963. Two first-generation prints of the missing third photo were recovered by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 6, p. 141 .

Walker shooting Marina Oswald testified that Lee told her on April 10, 1963, that he had used the rifle earlier that night in an attempt to assassinate retired U.S. Army General Edwin Walker, a controversial political activist, at Walker's home in Dallas.Testimony of Marina Oswald Porter , HSCA Hearings, vol. 2, pp. 232–233. The bullet was deflected from hitting Walker when it struck a window frame. Oswald escaped, hiding the rifle and retrieving it a day or two later.Marina Oswald, ibid. Jeanne De Mohrenschildt, an acquaintance of the Oswalds, testified that when she and her husband George visited the Oswalds on April 13, she saw a rifle, that "looked very much like" the Carcano, standing in the corner of a closet. When she told George what she had just seen, he joked to Lee, "Did you take a pot shot at Walker by any chance?"Testimony of Jeanne De Mohrenschildt , Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 9, pp. 314–317.

The De Mohrenschildts later found a copy of one of the backyard photographs, dated by hand 5 April 1963 (in Russian) and autographed by Oswald on the back with the message "To my friend George from Lee Oswald" in a record album they had loaned to Marina before the De Mohrenschildts moved to Haiti in May 1963.Photograph Authentication: The Oswald Backyard Photographs , HSCA Appendix, vol. 6, p. 141.George De Mohrenschildt, "I Am a Patsy! I Am a Patsy!" , HSCA Appendix, vol. 12, pp. 253–257.

Discovery and handling of the Carcano rifle in the Texas School Book Depository The Warren Commission found that, in the weeks before the assassination, Oswald kept the rifle wrapped in a blanket and hidden in the garage of friends Michael and Ruth Paine, where Marina was living at the time and where Oswald would occasionally visit. Michael Paine described "a package wrapped in a blanket", which he thought was camping equipment. He did find this odd, saying to himself "they don't make camping equipment of iron pipes any more".Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony Of Michael R. Paine Marina testified that, after she and Lee moved their belongings to the Paine home in September 1963, she found the rifle in the blanket while searching for a part for her child's crib.Testimony of Marina Oswald , Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 1, p. 26.

The Commission concluded that Oswald had smuggled the rifle into the Texas School Book Depository on the morning of the assassination, November 22, 1963, in a brown paper package, which he had told a co-worker contained "curtain rods",Testimony of Buell Wesley Frazier , Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 2, p. 226. although Oswald later denied this, and said that he carried only a lunch bag that day."Reports Relating to the Interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Department ", Warren Report, pp. 604–605."Reports Relating to the Interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Department ", Warren Report, p. 626. He also said that he did not own a rifle."Reports Relating to the Interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Department ", Warren Report, p. 601."Reports Relating to the Interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Department ", Warren Report, p. 619."Reports Relating to the Interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald at the Dallas Police Department ", Warren Report, p. 622.

About half an hour after the assassination of President Kennedy, a floor-by-floor search of the Texas School Book Depository Building was commenced by Dallas police, joined by sheriff's deputies.Testimony of J.W. Fritz , Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 4, pp. 204–205. The rifle was found by Deputy Sheriff Seymour Weitzman and Officer Gene Boone among cartons on the sixth floor.Testimony of Seymour Weitzman , Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 7, p. 107.Testimony of Eugene Boone , Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 3, p. 293.

The two officers who found the rifle—and later Captain Fritz—picked it up by the sling, but did not handle it until the arrival of Lt. Carl Day of the crime scene search section of the identification bureau.Testimony of Weitzman, Boone, and Fritz, ibid. Lt. Day then held the rifle by the stock, in one hand, "because it was too rough to hold a fingerprint" and inspected the rifle with a magnifying glass in his other hand.Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of J.C. Day . He checked that the bolt had no prints on it before Fritz ejected a live round.Day testimony, ibid.

Also found in the same vicinity were three 6.5×52mm brass cartridges later proven to have been fired from Oswald's rifle. One of the empty cartridges, CE 543, was dented in the area of the neck. Ballistic experts testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) that this likely occurred when the rifle was rapidly fired and the cartridge was ejected. When four test bullets were fired from the rifle, one of the four cartridges had a dented neck, similar to CE 543. HSCA, vol. 1, pp. 453–4