It's not just when our kids are raging that something like this could happen. A couple of years ago, I got a call early one evening from a police officer in a neighboring town. They had gotten a call that someone was pointing a gun out the window of a car. It seems that difficult child (17 at the time-old enough to have more sense) and a friend were driving through difficult child's girlfriend's neighborhood pointing a realistic-looking BB gun at people out the window of the car (not shooting it, just pointing it out the window).
Fortunately, when the police investigated, people who knew it was difficult child and his friend told the police that it was a BB gun and not a real gun. Also fortunately, the officer called us and asked us to take care of it so he wouldn't have to. He told me if he had seen someone pointing a gun from a car, he wouldn't have time to decide if it was real or not. And if someone wasn't going to get to go home that night, he was going to make sure it was the other guy, not him.
I still can't believe difficult child did something so reckless and so stupid, but since they weren't actually shooting BB's, he didn't see what the big deal was.