I concur with Greg.

The comments made on this forum recently are beyond absurd, and the deleting of comments and locking of threads appears to be protecting the the perceived reputation of those making fabricated and nonsensical comments.

I acknowledge that the realm of WWII USMC sniping is myopic and those of us who study it are an oddly passionate bunch. Perhaps that's because most of us are invested so heavily, financially and otherwise into pursuing and collecting these exceptionally rare rifles. And with the rifles comes an attempt to understand the history. We read the books, the documents and the interviews. We compare notes, share ideas, and constantly dig for more information. We do our best to protect prospective buyers of faked rifles. This may seem like a small realm of study, but those of use deep into it beg to differ.

There's lots of uninformed people on the internet. They make up nonsense and post idiotic threads all day. So be it. But when there's an attempt to defame the tireless efforts of one of the most dedicated researchers in the history of the subject matter, I'm not willing to stand by and watch someone with no depth of knowledge in that subject attempt to appear as the expert. Those efforts need to be squashed. On other forums, heated debate is allowed to play out. You want to have the respect of an expert? Prove you've earned it.