On his side, however, I was thinking I'd like one of those neat, pistol grip stocks for my SKS, because the original stock's length of pull is goofy-ly short. But after reading the BATFE rules for requiring adding so many new U.S. made parts or I'd have manufactured an illegal rifle, I immediately canceled my stock order.
You have a detachable magazine on the SKS?
If you don't, I don't think that BATFE rules about that stuff applies. And if you do, you're already violating CA law anyway.
Re SKS modifications:
http://www.simonov.net/uberlaw.htm
OLL's are quite legal, and assembling them legally is not a crime in California. The DOJ is simply balking at following through on a verdict that they lost in court.
How can I say that confidently? If the OLL business were illegal, it would be really easy to "bust" dealers at every gun show, and DOJ would certainly do it. OLL sales and legal CA-compliant AR assembly is going on in the light of day. One might ask whether it's worth the hassle and expense, but it's not hidden. DOJ knows all about it. They HAVE busted a dealer who brought in a large number of them, but that was for having insufficient secure storage space for them as required by law, not for the guns themselves. Had there been any chance of charging him with hundreds of counts of importing illegal firearms, you'd better believe they would have.
That doesn't mean that the DOJ won't hassle anyone who has not committed a crime. They're prosecuting attorneys, not your friends. In NC, Nifong trumped up and stuck to a known false
rape charge, tried to get a conviction when he knew the charge was false! Why would you think that others in his position wouldn't do something far less extreme? They're just people. Well maybe not, actually. They're lawyers, and they're in politics.
This guy made some tactical errors, it seems. They might, as some have suggested, have had little to do with OLL's, and a lot to do with other suspected transactions.
And it IS illegal to build an AR here except within certain very strict limits: many common "features" of AR rifles are banned by law, and most common receiver brand names are banned as well.