By David E. Petzal

During the taping of this season’s Gun Nuts (which promises to be bigger than Ben Hur) the question came up whether a deformed lead tip can cause a bullet to fly awry. Several times in the past, when shooting a group, I had shot a slug with a deformed tip and seen no indication of this at all. But before I went on camera I decided to check.

By Phil Bourjaily

In the spirit of the 100-bladed knife that contained a pinfire revolver, today’s curiosity is a flintlock ring.

It comes from the arms and armor collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and dates to 1650-1670. Set in between two pieces of rock crystal is a miniature flintlock, complete with a tiny flint inside. Parts of the lock are blued. The whole mechanism is carefully made and there’s cutout along the top of the ring so you can cock the hammer.

By David E. Petzal

This morning, I learned that the politically correct term for “hungry, starving, etc.” is “food insecure.” It will take weeks to get over that, if I ever do. But in any event, I shall now take time out from flinging lead at all points of the compass in the hopes of hitting something to review a pair of standout books.

"It’s Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It" is an odd and unclassifiable book by the odd and unclassifiable Bill Heavey. The publishers of Slow Food offered Mr. Heavey money if he would feed himself by foraging—everything from dandelion greens to persimmons that fell from a Washington, D.C. tree and had lain on the sidewalk for quite some time to things so rank and gross in nature that I cannot list them here, and then write about it.

Bill’s quest took him from Washington to San Francisco to Louisiana, and along the way he met the real subject of the book, which is not so much food as the people who forage as a way of life. No matter what Heavey writes about, he ends up with people, and if you have any literary acumen you’ll recall that this is what Bill Tarrant and Robert Ruark did as well. There is some hunting here, and some fishing, and quite a bit of information on food, and some fine-sounding recipes, but Slow Food is irresistible because it’s very funny and very sad and filled with unforgettable characters. Heavey is a strange and repellant character, but he writes like hell. Oh, and if you want to make a salad out of the stuff that grows in your lawn, watch out for dogs**t. $25, Atlantic Monthly Press.

By David E. Petzal

Memorial Day is a time to honor bravery, and we have shown plenty of it in the history of our republic. But you wonder, sometimes, who was bravest? The soldiers at Valley Forge, freezing and starving with no hope of victory? The men who survived Bataan? The troops who charged Omaha Beach? Maybe. But here’s my nomination:

At the end of 1863, the enlistments of many of the original Union regiments was coming to an end. These were the men who had put on blue in 1861 when it was assumed the coming war was going to be short and glorious—one or two big battles, and then everyone except for an unfortunate few would march home with their flags to much fanfare.