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Studio Photos of a Modern Mauser M98

Studio product photograph on white showing two views of a bolt action sporting rifle with a figured walnut stock and polished blued barrel

What This Image Shows​

A studio product photograph on plain white, showing two views of a modern bolt-action sporting rifle — the right-side profile with the bolt handle above, and the left-side profile with a contoured cheekpiece below. Both have highly figured walnut stocks with tiger-stripe grain and polished blued barrels. No branding or serial numbers are legible.

This is catalogue photography of a commercial Mauser M98 sporting rifle, included as a reference for what that designation actually denotes. The distinction matters because the words Mauser 98 and K98 have been used interchangeably in coverage of this case, and they are not the same thing: one is a modern hunting rifle built on the Mauser action, the other is a wartime military carbine.

Researchers examining the official account have argued that the recovered weapon is a commercially made Mauser 98 rather than the wartime rifle it has often been described as, which bears on the account of where it came from and how it was acquired. The distinction is set out at Mauser .30-06 Rifle, with the forensic record at ATF Fragment Inconclusive.

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