ROB CAPRIO SAID:
It is clear from the evidence that Klein's NEVER mounted scopes on the 40" model.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I don't care what Mitchell Westra told the HSCA, it seems quite obvious from the various 1963 Klein's advertisements pictured below that Klein's DID mount scopes on the 40-inch carbines they shipped to customers in 1963.
The three Klein's ads shown in the photo below are almost identical when it comes to the description being used concerning the scope, with one of the ads (the top one from February 1963 that Lee Oswald used to order his rifle) indicating a 36-inch carbine, while the other two show a 40-inch weapon:
So to say that Klein's never mounted scopes on its 40-inch rifles is practically the same as totally ignoring all of the many ads that Klein's Sporting Goods was placing in magazines in mid to late 1963.
Was Klein's lying to its mail-order customers when it said that a customer could purchase a 40-inch carbine with scope ("as illustrated") -- i.e., the scope is attached to the gun itself?
I suppose a conspiracy theorist can always argue that the words "as illustrated" (or, as is the case with the November 1963 ad, just the word "illustrated", without the word "as" preceding it) doesn't have to mean the scope will be attached to the gun itself when Klein's ships it to a customer. The CTers can always claim that "as illustrated" only refers to the scope itself, and not its "mounted" status on the gun.
But I think another fair and even more accurate and reasonable interpretation of those words ("as illustrated") is an interpretation that I'm guessing a lot of people would have when they read that ad -- and that is: the scope is going to be mounted on the rifle I'm ordering, because that's what is "illustrated" in this ad.
But in any event, we can know for certain that Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago absolutely, positively DID mount a scope on a forty-inch Mannlicher-Carcano rifle for at least one of its customers in March of 1963 -- and that customer was Lee Harvey Oswald.
SCOPE ADDENDUM:
With respect to the conspiracy theorists' persistent claim that Klein's Sporting Goods never mounted scopes on their 40-inch Italian Carcano rifles, the gunsmith who worked in the Klein's warehouse in 1963, William H. Sharp, was interviewed in 2013 and said that he told his boss right after the assassination in 1963: “It’s my rifle, I put the scope on it”.
David Von Pein
August 2, 2012
February 1, 2014
