A lot of people are terrified of the next mass shooting happening under their watch. I get that. No one wants that on their conscience; the idea that something happened and you might have been able to do something to prevent it but somehow didn't. I wouldn't want that on my soul, even if I really did try everything to prevent it.

Hindsight is a mother.

But there's a dark side to this that we need to understand. We're seeing a lot of kids unnecessarily traumatized out of what officials might call "an abundance of caution." This includes the active shooter drills that strive for realism, for example--though I'm not convinced those are particularly common--but it also includes reactions to perceived threats like this:

Homecoming night at Betty H. Fairfax High School in Laveen on Saturday will be memorable for students for the wrong reasons.

“I felt extremely panicked. I was getting a lot of anxiety,” said high school senior Isabel Cardenas. “I heard rumors going around about a gun possibly, and people started freaking out about that.”

She said school staff ushered everyone into the gym and locked it up.

Phoenix Police said officers were called out to the campus around 8 p.m.

“Police came in, and they‘re flashing their giant lights at us and have rifles drawn. I think that’s what caused a lot more of the panic,” said Cardenas. “I am grateful that police took it seriously, but I feel that it shouldn’t have been taken to the extent that it was.”

...

Meanwhile, students said school staff kept them in the dark throughout the situation and had a reactive response instead of being proactive.

“This had been a mass panic so me and a whole cohort of students are very concerned at the safety of our school, what plans were put in place and why we didn’t really have a protocol for these things,” said Eric Mexia, a senior at the high school.

Here's the thing, though. Officers detained two unarmed boys outside and then approached a third inside. The one inside was believed to be armed and became agitated when police approached him, resulting in him being tased.

No firearms were found.

That's right. Officials apparently reacted like this over a rumor or some other unfounded report, only for absolutely nothing to come of it. 

I get being cautious, but there was clearly no plan in place on how to handle something like this. Instead, they just freaked out and flew by the seat of their pants, creating a bigger problem than they might otherwise have had.

I say that because every part of this has foreseeable problems so long as you take the time to actually plan things out and look for pitfalls.

Of course, not all of the criticism was warranted. Some took issue with the school not being more proactive, but I really don't see what, besides better planning for such an event, they could have done to be proactive here. 

However, at the heart of this is a fear over guns in general. I don't want to make light of the potential damage an armed student could do, and they're not carrying lawfully no matter what, so I get that.

But this reaction isn't how people would have reacted 10 years ago, for example. They'd have approached it very differently and likely with a lot less panic.

Unfortunately, the media has everyone freaking out and this kind of thing is the ultimate result.