marlinguy wrote on Nov 17
th, 2018 at 12:14am:
If I told you a gun belonged to a certain individual, and that he'd shot on some winning team, it's just a good story. If I found records from the club's history, or scores shot in an old NRA gun magazine from the era. Then it enforces he existed and shot on the team.
If I further found documentation of pictures of him with the gun, it seals the deal. But the story is still important, and ties the other documents together into a nice package.
If such records, photos, etc., are found to exist, then
facts have replaced conjecture, misunderstanding, ignorance, wishful thinking, & everything else that goes into concocting an unsupported "story," a more descriptive name for which would be "tall tale." When reasonable documentation exists (which doesn't necessarily mean that every single detail of the subject is known), a valid historical record has been established, & to
continue calling it a "story," as that very ambiguous word is commonly used, confuses the issue & casts suspicion on the accuracy of the documentation.
More than "a question of semantics," I think: when the cops say "that's the suspect's story," they do
not mean they believe it really happened that way--they believe it's been made up in place of the facts.