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surprise_i'm_armed wrote:IMHO - Maybe Jack Ruby could only get off 1 shot because he was surrounded
by a large number of LEO's and others who jumped him right away?

They were on him pretty quick, but it's hardly fast enough to preclude a second shot, unless the weak grip caused the revolver to shift in his hand such that he couldn't easily pull the trigger again. Even someone with no shooting experience could easily make three or four shots from that range in the time before the LE response would have forced the attack to stop. In fact, from the video, it appears he is following Oswald to the ground intentionally, rather than being pushed down, as if he's intending to finish the job by whatever means necessary.

surprise_i'm_armed wrote:I don't know which barrel length Ruby's pistol was, but his was a .38.

Looks like a 2 inch in most of the stills. Of course, the angle's not great, but you can see the barrel pretty easily.

I could not find details as to the type of cartridge he used. Was +P available in 1963?

Probably irrelevant; what 5shot fails to mention, (aside from Ruby's missing finger, which, being missing, wasn't laid alongside the gun as a pointing method) is that the shot was made from almost contact distance. It has been shown that the weaker calibers do pretty well when you're close enough for the propellant gases to enter the wound and do more damage after the bullet has passed.

Of course, the OP also fails to explain why, given this supposedly wonderful shooting technique, Ruby could only manage a single shot and a marginally useful hit to the abdomen from hand-to-hand combat range. (The fact that Oswald died from it is more an indicator of medical techniques of the day than of the effectiveness of the shot.)

G.C.Montgomery wrote:Point shooting itself is fairly natural. But the idea of using the middle, rather than the index finger to manipulate the trigger is not a natural grip for most people.

It's amusing that he uses Jack Ruby as an example of the grip and successful point shooting. Ruby didn't have much choice in his grip, and he wasn't likely to miss a well-restrained target at that range regardless of method. He claims that the target area was small, but it was larger in all dimensions than the distance from the muzzle to the target. At any rate, the single hit to Oswald's abdomen was hardly a good hit by defensive (rapid incapacitation) standards; Oswald was said to be responsive in the ambulance, and wasn't pronounced dead for over an hour after the shot.