It's not bad to question things. The problem I have with Martin's position here isn't so much about authentication as that he wants to use it as a Get Out Of Jail Free card in order to ignore the pistol as evidence. The problem is, this tack will not accomplish that. He would need to show that the Pistol is somehow defective as evidence in this case. That is, that some fact about the pistol would actually disqualify it, like it was the wrong caliber, or that the barrel was welded shut rendering the gun incapable of firing.
As Robert Oswald said (I'm paraphrasing), "It's good to question things [the assassination]. But after the third time, the fourth, the fifth at some point it's enough."
This wasn't the police framing a black man or poor white man for shooting a gas station clerk in the middle of the night. Where one or two witnesses were either coerced or "encouraged" to point a finger at that person, someone who was "causing problems" anyway. Other witnesses ignored or not sought. That is either framing him or rushing an arrest. An easy conviction that was on page A-22 in the paper. The evidence is that Wade and the DPD did do things like that. It's a fact.
But this crime was investigated again and again and again (heck, it still is). By others, by the FBI, the WC, news reporters. Did the conspiracy include all of these people and investigations too? We go from a handful of people to dozens and dozens. Over half a century? Do we simply dismiss all of them as well? They were corrupt? Or possibly so? Hugh Aynesworth was on the ground there; he was at the assassination and then rushed to the Tippit scene. He interviewed the people. At that time. He was a heckuva reporter. Was he corrupt? Of course the conspiracists say *he was* corrupt, he was working for the CIA.
This is what, in part, "gets me". It's an endless series of charges of conspiracies, coverups, coverups of those coverups. Multiple generations of Americans in the government and outside of it. Aynesworth was corrupt. The WC was corrupt. The HSCA was corrupt. The news media were corrupt (Operation Mockingbird and all that). Really? This is the world that you think exists?
Asking questions is not only not bad but it's good. But at some point you have to accept the answers. This is all we have. We're not going to have a Perry Mason moment where everything falls into place. If you're not going to accept the answers then they're just not good faith questions but simply attempts to, for some odd reason, exonerate this very odd fellow Lee Harvey Oswald.
