I guess he thought he'd look soooooo cool doing that. Of course, it wouldn't look as good as casing the rifle and bagging the field gear so as not to attract attention to himself, but it looks like that's exactly what he wanted, IMO.
Yeh, he sure did get some attention.....just not in the way he expected.
Here's a personal experience about military being armed in public I'd like to share for the LOL's:
This is back in the early 70's after getting back from "Nam and joining a reserve unit. I'm driving back to Ft. DeRussy in Waikiki in my jeep after spending the weekend on manuevers up in the hills just outside of Schofield Barracks. I got a sidearm strapped on, my M-60 and 3 M-16's in the back seat all assigned to 0-3's and up. I'm in full field gear with mostly worn-off camo still on my face and jeep insignias and glass subdued in mud and OD tape.
I'm stopped behind a tour bus in the far right lane in front of the Ilikai Hotel. I get rear-ended by a Coastie on leave turning right without looking ahead of him.
My jeep gets its' rear quarter panel corner jammed into the rear right tire. I'm OK, so I jump out and see if the guy that hit me is OK. He's OK but kind of in shock a lil bit. I try to radio in but 'net is already down, so I need to find a phone to call in a sitrep. The nearest place I could think of is the front desk inside the hotel, but here I have all of these weapons that I'm personally responsible for and I'm not about to leave them in the jeep while I go into the hotel to make the call.
Soooooooo, I gather up all the weapons, sling and carry however I can, enter the hotel and as invisibly as I could, strode through the hotel lobby, went up to the front desk, ignored all of the gawking tourists and asked the desk clerk very politely if I could use their phone to call in the accident I got into. After a few minutes talking to a very irate E-7 Motor Pool wrencher who owned the jeep, I quick-marched my way back out into the street and already there's MP's on site with the WTF look on their faces looking at me like WTF was I thinking. Wrecker shows up, armory guys show up, local cops show up.... I was waiting for the news crews to show up with all of the fuss being kicked up, all over a simple little fender bender.
I never ever said anything to anybody about what I had to do to get to the nearest phone, or my shitting bricks over a possible shit-storm ass-ripping meet-up with the battalion CO over what happened. Ha.