As a quick refresher:
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I spend a fair amount of time researching and following articles about no-knock cases gone wrong and numerous violations of the fourth amendment. Via Kim DuToit I found this link to an article over at The Munchkin Wrangler that is spot-on when it comes to the militarization of our police and how this has led to blatant violations of the fourth. This is a nationally growing problem that needs to be addressed by the citizenry before it gets further out of control.

Money quote:
“When you dress like a soldier, carry the same equipment as a soldier, talk like a soldier, train like a soldier (and in many cases, alongside a soldier), and you're told that you're fighting a war, then sooner or later you'll feel like a soldier, and then you'll start acting like one.

The problem with that is that the mission of the soldier and that of the cop are fundamentally incompatible. The soldier is there to kill the enemy and break his stuff. The cop is there to impartially enforce the law with the least amount of force necessary for the job.”

If you have the time, read it in entirety as well as the comments below. There’s some very good analysis within.

When I was a kid I watched my dad rebuild the engine on his Chevy Chevelle. Years later in my pre-teens I bought an old broken down go-cart frame and two old lawnmower engines for fifteen dollars with four months of saved allowance. My dad taught me how to break them down, service them, and put back the best parts to make one good engine. That was a fun project, and led to an interest in doing my own automotive repairs when I came of driving age. A decent set of tools and a shop manual will allow anyone with a modicum of mechanical competency the ability to do simple repairs that would cost three or four times more if done by a professional mechanic. Along with the money savings, it is satisfaction in a job well done, and for me, insurance that the job has been done correctly. There have been enough times in my life when I had a job done by “professionals” and regretted it for one reason or another. I found the expression, “if you want it done right, you should do it yourself” to ring true, and have followed it in all but the most extreme cases.

Shortly after college I decided to get rid of my sporty car and get something more functional and appropriate for my camping hobby. I originally wanted a Jeep Wranger, but ended up opting for a Cherokee for the added cargo capacity. In January 1993 I bought what would become my commuter, off-roader, and all around workhorse. Over the years she has taken me through water, snow, rain, rocks and mud. Up narrow and steep mountain roads, rutted trails, and through ravines and canyons. She has hauled countless tonnage of cargo from San Diego, to Bremerton Washington, all over Oregon, and extensively in the South Western California and Arizona deserts. Ever since I handed my dad wrenches as I watched him rebuild his Chevy, I have always wanted to rebuild an engine. In July of last year I began the restoration project that turned out to be that and more.

With nearly 300,000 miles on a tired straight six, I had finally wore the cam lobes down so bad that the exhaust cycle was kicking back out the intake manifold. I was able to limp her home 200 miles from a desert camping trip and after a too long delay, finally cleared some time to pull the engine. After having the cylinders and crank machined, and a fresh coat of paint applied by a great bunch of guys at Rick’s Machine shop, I got back a powerplant that looks brand new. That was sometime in August. That engine sat on the garage floor for almost four months as I removed more and more till I eventually had the engine bay and body stripped down to the nub. It has been a “one thing leads to another” project that snowballed. Once all the years worth of oil, grime and grease were peeled away, I decided to put down some fresh paint. That led to repainting the suspension and that led to the decision to repaint the entire exterior. It’s taken far longer than I originally planned, but then again, what fulfilling project doesn’t. A week before Christmas a buddy helped me drop the engine back onto her mounts, and I hope this weekend to get the rest of the little bits back together so I can fire her up after a long dormant rest.

January 2008 marks the fifteenth year since I bough her. And April will mark her twenty-first birthday since she was built. She has been a great vehicle over the years, and when this is all done, should give me another solid fifteen years of service (providing that OPEC doesn’t continue to drive the gas prices through the roof). Maybe somewhere down the line I will be able to swap the engine out for a Mr. Fuison, or some other new fangled powerplant. In the mean time I have to thank my dad for making me into a wrench turner. Now I will be able to check off “rebuild engine” from my list. Next big one, “build own home”. That may take a bit longer to satisfy.

For the lucky owners of AK clones outside the Orwellian restrictions of California law, or for those here who own Ruger Mini-30’s or the venerable CZ-527 in 7.62X39mm, some Yugoslavian military ammo has become available here. It appears to be corrosive in nature, which of course is not best-case scenario, but by today’s standards is a pretty decent price for brass cased ammunition.

In a recent post over at Random Nuclear Strikes Phil was asking about gun legislation in California in the late 80’s and I made a comment about our lovely 1989 Roberti-Roos AWB. It got me thinking about the details of that ban, so I went over to the CADOJ website and found a .pdf file describing the “Generic Characteristics Defining Assault Weapons”. Here’s how California defines an “assault weapon” and here’s how ridiculous some of this stuff is (all my comments are bolded):

RIFLES
(1) A semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and any one of the following:
(A) A pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon.
(Presumably a pistol grip gives a shooter more control, and apparently the state does not wish for shooters to have better control when handing firearms.)
(B) A thumbhole stock.
(Essentially a pistol grip built into the stock, see above.)
(C) A folding or telescoping stock.
(I believe folding stocks were originally designed to make a rifle lighter and more compact for paratroopers. Could be handy for some people to store a rifle that is shorter, but as for making a semi-auto more lethal through accuracy, hardly. Telescoping stocks are ideal tools to make a gun adjustable for the shooter. A stock that is too long will not properly fit a shooter with small arms, and one that is too short can be awkward for a big frame. Again, better fit means better control. Apparently uncontrolled shooting is favored here in CA.)
(D) A grenade launcher or flare launcher.
(They must have included this just as a catchall or perhaps the writers are just so ignorant they thought grenade launchers were available. I do know I can buy a flare gun for a boat, so I don’t know why a flare launcher mounted on say an AR-15 makes it inherently more dangerous, but I am not a politician.)
(E) A flash suppressor.
(I have shot guns that spewed a one foot flame, and others that had no visible flash out the barrel. No one really cares that flash suppressors are not available because everyone puts on muzzle brakes that look cooler, so this is another totally pointless addition based in ignorance and/or fear.)
(F) A forward pistol grip.
(Again with control. Pretty simple.)
(2) A semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.
(Besides the fact that law enforcement feels the need to use 30 round magazines in their AR-15’s (there must be a reason why they want more than ten rounds!), and we know that criminals can get and do use standard capacity magazines, it seems pretty simple to figure out the equation. Three 10round magazines are the same as one 30round magazine. Magazine changes take two seconds. This is so dumb.)
(3) A semiautomatic, centerfire rifle that has an overall length of less than 30 inches.
(I have never understood the whole gun length thing. I can buy a Marlin Camp Carbine in .45ACP that has a sixteen inch barrel and about fourteen inches of stock that meets the minimum length. OR, I can buy a .45cal pistol that is about seven inches in total length. Both shoot the exact same cartridge.)

PISTOLS
(4) A semiautomatic pistol that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and any one of the following:
(A) A threaded barrel, capable of accepting a flash suppressor, forward handgrip, or silencer.
(Flash suppressor, see above. Forward grip, see above. Silencer, too beneficial to hearing. Plus, if the report of firearms were suppressed, we’d have to eliminate all those noise ordinances…)
(B) A second handgrip.
(What is it with the second grip?? Why not just eliminate all grip altogether? No point in controlling the firearm you are shooting, right?)
(C) A shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel that allows the bearer to fire the weapon without burning his or her hand, except a slide that encloses the barrel.
(This one was my favorite. They are pretty much saying out loud, we don’t want you to be able to avoid burning yourself. Remove the safety devices from your gun if you want it to be “legal”. So stupid.)
(D) The capacity to accept a detachable magazine at some location outside the pistol grip.
(Does it matter where the magazine feeds the chamber? No, it really doesn’t. Moronic.)
(5) A semiautomatic pistol with a fixed magazine that has the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds.
(See above for magazine capacities. Police use 15 round magazines in their Beretta’s, and higher in their Glock’s. Why do they NEED that?)

SHOTGUNS
(6) A semiautomatic shotgun that has both of the following:
(A) A folding or telescoping stock.
(B) A pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon, thumbhole stock, or vertical handgrip.
(see above for both A & B. Better fit means better control, but folding stocks and places to put your hands scare the political elite.)
(7) A semiautomatic shotgun that has the ability to accept a detachable magazine.
(Don’t know why the feeding method matters, but these people ARE the weapon experts…)
(8) Any shotgun with a revolving cylinder.
(This one is funny to me because when I was eighteen, before these dumb rules went into affect, a company sold a shotgun called “The Streetsweeper”. Apparently the name scared someone. It had a revolving drum cylinder that held around 18 shotgun shells. It was cool and I wanted one. Sadly, I never scraped up the cash.)

I think it’s safe to determine that both Roberti and Roos are gun fearing hoplophobes, and that every California politician who is responsible for this law taking affect should be ashamed to call themselves an American. Rather than go after criminals and crime, they went after cosmetic features of semiautomatic guns. What I would call “a whole lot of nothing”.