Reply #27: That's not a straw man, that's mockery of your position.

[Bolo Boffin]

Thank you for stating the source of your position about the ID of the rifle as a Mauser: Chapter 8 of Lane's Rush to Judgment. That led me in Bugliosi's book to pp. 791-792, where Bugliosi deals specifically with the Mauser ID found in Chapter 8 of Lane's Rush to Judgment. Consult Monty Lutz' presentation for the HSCA showing the basic similarities between the Mauser and four other European rifles. There is no reason to think that anyone making the statement about the rifle being a Mauser had examined the rifle in any great detail. And one of the sources for this mistake, Weitzman, said in 1967 that he had "no doubt" the rifle they found was a Mannlicher-Carcano.

"...It was strictly a mistaken identity which anybody could make. If you know anything about guns, a Mauser is a Mauser. What make it is, what country it was made in, can easily be misidentified because mostly your Mauser mechanism looks very similar." Weitzman went on to say that the Carcano "was a Mauser-action rifle" and really was "an Italian Mauser."

A defense attorney would have been a fool to use this argument in a trial of LHO. The prosecuting attorneys would have admitted the videotape of the discovery of the rifle into evidence, along with the testimony of the people being cited by the defense stating they simply made a mistake by calling it a Mauser. Grasping at straws is not in the best interest of a defense attorney.