VETERANS

PISTOL SHOOTING

WOLF PACK

"A wolf pack: the first 3 are the old or sick, they give the pace to the entire pack. If it was the other way round, they would be left behind, losing contact with the pack. In case of an ambush they would be sacrificed. Then come 5 strong ones, the front line. In the center are the rest of the pack members, then the 5 strongest following. Last is alone, the alpha. He controls everything from the rear. In that position he can see everything, decide the direction. He sees all of the pack. The pack moves according to the elders pace and help each other, watch each other."

ISIS has issued a disturbing ruling detailing who can have sex with female slaves

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Islamic State theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when "owners" of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females.
The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond the Islamic State's previous known utterances on the subject, a leading Islamic State scholar said. It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it controls.
To read the fatwa, click here.
The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by U.S. Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top Islamic State official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed some of the documents, which have not been previously published.
Among the religious rulings are bans on a father and son having sex with the same female slave, and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as "part of a joint ownership."
The United Nations and human rights groups have accused the Islamic State of the systematic abduction and rape of thousands of women and girls as young as 12, especially members of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. Many have been given to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.
Far from trying to conceal the practice, Islamic State has boasted about it and established a department of "war spoils" to manage slavery. Reuters reported on the existence of the department on Monday.
In an April report, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 female escapees who recounted how Islamic State fighters separated young women and girls from men and boys and older women. They were moved "in an organized and methodical fashion to various places in Iraq and Syria." They were then sold or given as gifts and repeatedly raped or subjected to sexual violence.

Dos and don'ts

Fatwa No. 64, dated Jan. 29, 2015, and issued by Islamic State's Committee of Research and Fatwas, appears to codify sexual relations between IS fighters and their female captives for the first time, going further than a pamphlet issued by the group in 2014 on how to treat slaves.
The fatwa starts with a question: "Some of the brothers have committed violations in the matter of the treatment of the female slaves. These violations are not permitted by Sharia law because these rules have not been dealt with in ages. Are there any warnings pertaining to this matter?"
Reuters
It then lists 15 injunctions, which in some instances go into explicit detail. For example:
"If the owner of a female captive, who has a daughter suitable for intercourse, has sexual relations with the latter, he is not permitted to have intercourse with her mother and she is permanently off limits to him. Should he have intercourse with her mother then he is not permitted to have intercourse with her daughter and she is to be off limits to him."
Islamic State's sexual exploitation of female captives has been well documented, but a leading IS expert at Princeton University, Cole Bunzel, who has reviewed many of the group's writings, said the fatwa went beyond what has previously been published by the militants on how to treat female slaves.
"It reveals the actual concerns of IS slave owners," he said in an email.
Still, he cautioned that not "everything dealt with in the fatwa is indicative of a relevant violation. It doesn't mean father and son were necessarily sharing a girl. They're at least being 'warned' not to. But I bet some of these violations were being committed."
Militant website via APIslamic State militants pass by a convoy in Tel Abyad, Syria.
The fatwa also instructs owners of female slaves to "show compassion towards her, be kind to her, not humiliate her, and not assign her work she is unable to perform." An owner should also not sell her to an individual whom he knows will mistreat her.
Professor Abdel Fattah Alawari, dean of Islamic Theology at Al-Azhar University, a 1,000-year-old Egyptian center for Islamic learning, said Islamic State "has nothing to do with Islam" and was deliberately misreading centuries-old verses and sayings that were originally designed to end, rather than encourage, slavery.
"Islam preaches freedom to slaves, not slavery. Slavery was the status quo when Islam came around," he said. "Judaism, Christianity, Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations all practiced it and took the females of their enemies as sex slaves. So Islam found this abhorrent practice and worked to gradually remove it."
In September 2014 more than 120 Islamic scholars from around the world issued an open letter to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi refuting the group's religious arguments to justify many of its actions. The scholars noted that the "reintroduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam."

California Law Allowing Seizure of Guns without Notice Begins Jan. 1

Gun-safety legislation going into effect in California next week will allow authorities to seize a person’s weapons for 21 days if a judge determines there’s potential for violence.
Proposed in the wake of a deadly May 2014 shooting rampage by Elliot Rodger, the bill provides family members with a means of having an emergency “gun violence restraining order” imposed against a loved one if they can convince a judge that allowing that person to possess a firearm “poses an immediate and present danger of causing personal injury to himself, herself or another by having in his or her custody or control.”

The 5 Best-Selling Guns of 2015

Concealed carry is the hot trend in firearms sales, and the favorite weapon on this list features light weight and accuracy.

With concealed carry a primary concern for gun buyers, Smith & Wesson's M&P Shield line of subcompact guns has proved extremely popular, with over 1 million guns produced. Image: Smith & Wesson Holding.

There are probably as many favorite guns among firearms enthusiasts as there are models manufactured. One way to determine what the "best" gun is is to see what people are buying. But that's not a straightforward endeavor.
Since Smith & Wesson Holding (NASDAQ:SWHC) and Sturm, Ruger (NYSE:RGR) are the only publicly traded gunsmiths, we're able to gain some insights into their sales, but mostly of broad categories rather than specific models.
For example, Smith & Wesson reported that fiscal-second-quarter sales were driven 15% higher by demand for its polymer shield and M&P models, while Ruger pointed to demand for its new AR-556 modern sporting rifle and LC9 pistol as reason sell-through from independent distributors to retailers jumped 28% in its last period. But with the bulk of the balance of the industry privately held, it's hard to get a read on who's buying what.
So I turned to GunBroker.com, the world's largest online auction site for firearms and accessories, which every month publishes the five best-selling firearms on its site. While it lists the leaders in every major category of firearms sold, breaking them down between new, used, and a combination of the two, for this list I limited the selection to the five best-selling new, semi-automatic pistols. However, GunBroker.com doesn't list specific numbers for the guns sold. No raw unit totals or total dollar values. So what I did was compile all the monthly lists and broke it down into which gun landed in the top spot the most number of times. Then I looked at which was No. 2 most often; which was third, and so on.
I then arbitrarily assigned a value to each slot. A first-place finish got 5 points; second place, 4 points; third, 3, and so on. I then tallied the results and picked out the top five guns for 2015 (January to November). Nineteen different gun models from eight separate manufacturers appeared on the list. Here are the top five best-selling new semiautomatic pistols on my list, in reverse order.
Fourth Place (tie): Smith & Wesson M&P9 and Sig Sauer P938. Neither gun landed in the top spot over the course of the year, but the models were gun buyers' second and third choices most often. The M&P9 is Smith & Wesson's direct challenge to Glock in the low-cost polymer frame segment and its lightweight design has helped the gunmaker enjoy tremendous growth as handgun sales have taken off.

Similar in size to its best-selling P238 pistol, Sig Sauer's P938 now offers concealed carry gun buyers the ballistic advantage of the 9mm cartridge. Image: Sig Sauer.

In contrast, Sig Sauer's P938 is a hammer-fired, single-action semi-auto, with aluminum alloy frame and steel slide. It's super-lightweight and designed for concealed carry.
Third Place: Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield. This is S&W's answer to the concealed-carry gun niche that is exploding. So popular are its Shield models that during the second quarter the gunmaker produced its one millionth model, which it says makes it "the best-selling personal protection and self-defense pistol" on the market.
Second Place: Taurus PT-111 Millenium G2. Yet another gun designed for the concealed carry market, the Taurus PT-111 is available in 9mm and built on a lightweight polymer platform in a subcompact form factor. Its appearance on the list would surprise many gun enthusiasts, but the fact it was the favorite gun four months in a row probably raised even more eyebrows, though it also attested to the gun's meeting a specific need in the market.

Compiled by author. Data source: GunBroker.com.

First Place: Kel Tec PMR-30. This might not have been the gun many would have expected to top the list, but the Kel Tec PMR-30 dominated sales at GunBroker.com this year, coming in first place more times than any other model (five), and regularly being a gun buyer's second or third choice. The Kel Tec was also on the top-five list more often than any other model (eight), and unlike Smith & Wesson, Ruger, or Sig Sauer, which each had three different models appear at any time over the course of the year, it was only the Kel Tec PMR-30 that gun buyers wanted.

The Kel Tec PMR-30. Image: Kel Tec Weapons.

What pushes gun enthusiasts to want the Kel Tec is its light weight. Even fully loaded with 30 double-stacked .22 Magnum rounds (.22 WMR), its glass-reinforced nylon Zytel frame is lighter than many polymer-frame guns, yet there's a distinct lack of recoil when fired. It's also pretty accurate.
Gun sales have never been greater. The FBI is on track to conduct more background checks on gun buyers this year than at any other time, even more than the record number of investigations performed in 2013. While GunBroker.com will release its best-selling firearm for 2015 next month, there's a good bet it will be one of those here. And considering how often the Kel Tec PMR-30 has topped the lists so far, I'd be surprised if it wasn't the overall choice of gun buyers everywhere.

AR-15 DETAILED LOWER DRAWINGS