Here is this paragraph. Read it and think what comes to your mind.

A Fort Lee soldier has been convicted of brandishing a pistol outside a Hopewell eatery in one of the few cases of a concealed-gun permit-holder breaking the law since Virginians were allowed to carry hidden guns into bars and restaurants serving alcohol.

When I read it, my first thought was “Drunk G.I. got in a tiff with somebody at restaurant where booze is served and pulled and now he is paying for it.” Well, apparently not quite like that. Here is what happened according to the same The Richmond Times Dispatch article that opened with the quote above:

Bell brandished his concealed gun outside a restaurant that doesn’t serve alcohol.

It happened in the parking lot of a Denny’s for God’s sake! The soldier did not go inside, got drunk, stepped outside and beat the crap out of or shot somebody with a gun. He apparently was not involved directly in the fight. He did display a weapon he was carrying which is illegal if his life was not being threatened. He was found guilty and I have no complaints about that.

Now the question I ask of Mr. Mark Bowes (the creative writer of the ‘article’) is,  if the law that you mentioned in the beginning of the article was not violated, why not only bring it but make a huge fuss about it?

And then I remembered that integrity is not a part of the journalistic experience. Silly me.