Did you see that thunder hit the building? It tasted LOUD!

I was checking the news today and saw this headline:

Gunshots Fired At the Pentagon

Gunshots can't be 'fired'. A gunshot is a sound, and as most sounds are pressure waves moving indiscriminately in all directions, they can't be directed 'At' a target.

I suppose (for the sake of argument) that one could say that the Pentagon is not just a building. It is also a region of Washington. One could logically say that 'gunshots were heard at the Pentagon', or maybe 'gunshots were reported at the Pentagon', but that doesn't sound aggressive enough. 

The only way this sentence works is by changing the headline from 'Gunshots Fired At the Pentagon' to 'Shots Fired at the Pentagon', which would at least be closer to proper grammar. That implies that the Pentagon (the building) was ATTACKED, which is clearly the intent of this article.

Notice I also changed the 'At' to 'at'. If you're going to capitalize everything, do it, but don't capitalize 'at' and then ignore 'the'. Consistency is key. Maybe they should capitalize every letter instead, like this:

GUNSHOTS FIRED AT THE PENTAGON

That's very dramatic. Some exclamation points and an emoticon might be helpful as well.

WTF?! GUNSHOTS FIRED AT THE PENTAGON!!!!! 

The best part of the article, though, isn't the headline, it's this bit of stellar journalism:

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan confirmed reports of possible shots fired near the building. 

A civilian reported he may have heard shots at about 5 a.m. ...

Sigh. I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that this came from Fox News.