A trio of idiotic teens are in police custody and lucky to be alive in Albuquerque today after putting on clown masks and lurking around a childrens’ clothing store while armed with what appeared to be a handgun.

 Three people dressed as clowns were taken into custody Sunday after being found with a possible firearm, Albuquerque police said.

Police spokesman Simon Drobik said officers were dispatched to a call about a “clown sighting” near a kids’ clothing store.

Authorities located three juveniles donning clown masks.

Drobik said they were also in possession of what appeared to be a handgun.

The investigation was ongoing.

It’s not clear what charges the three could face.

The incident comes amid a rash of hoaxes and threats of scary clown sightings across the nation.

I’m sure that these teens were likely just hoping to scare people, but as this weird outbreak of clown sightings continues nationwide—with some of them clearly meant to intimidate and tied to criminal behavior—the risk is increasing that clown pranksters will be met by violence from a panicked citizen.

This risk increases greatly when the “clown” appears to be armed with a realistic weapon, such as the handgun (real or replica) in the possession of these three morons.

Instead of seeing kids pulling a prank, it would be very easy for a citizen to construe people in clown masks with weapons as potential armed robbers, regardless of their actual intent.

A clown on a bank-robbing spree just arrested for crimes around metropolitan Detroit, and four robbers dressed as clowns beat a man with baseball bats and pointed a gun at him in Florida.

Four robbers wearing clown masks struck a driving Naples man with a car, beat him with baseball bats, stole his jewelry and sped away in his car, deputies said.

Collier County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to a robbery in progress shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday at Santa Barbara and Prince Andrew boulevards in East Naples, according to an incident report.

There, deputies found Naples jeweler Ariel Gomez Lottridge, 35, bleeding with a large lump on his head.

Gomez Lottridge told deputies his white Toyota SUV was struck by a black car and two young men wearing masks jumped out and started attacking him with baseball bats. One of the men then took Gomez Lottridge’s car and sped off. The other left in the black car.

Citizens can reasonably interpret armed masked people approaching them as potential threats, and some make calculate—rightly or wrongly—that a person advancing upon them in a clown mask and carrying some sort of weapon is a deadly force threat best addressed with well-aimed gunfire.