We've lost our dad-burn minds.

An 11-year-old Mobile kid was arrested last week for "making a terrorist threat." An 11-year-old I said, charged with a crime that carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

We've lost more than our minds. We've lost ourselves.

Sheriff's deputies in Mobile said the kid texted 911 with two false alarms - which I'll grant you is dumb as an anvil in a life raft. He claimed in one text that the school was on fire. Which it wasn't. He claimed in another that armed men were trying to get into the school. Which they weren't.

It was childish behavior. From ... a child.

We've grown so afraid that we've given ourselves another thing to fear.

We see terrorists at every turn. In school lunch rooms and in airports, on street corners and in the scrawlings of disaffected teens. Text too much hyperbole, and you're a terrorist. Write the wrong words on your Facebook page, and the life you knew is over. Be a complete idiot for a single blabbering moment in time, and you are public enemy No. 1.

We don't need the SWAT team every time a kid says something stupid. (Eric Schultz / eschultz@al.com)

Those who fear the Second Amendment is under attack ought to pay heed. Because, in panic over terrorism and mass shootings limits on the First Amendment are already here.

If you told me 30 years ago teens could be arrested for saying dumb things, I'd have laughed out loud. And gone to jail. But it happens almost weekly in Alabama (and elsewhere) these days.

Last month a Selma student whose backpack triggered the metal detectors at his school quipped that he had a gun and a bomb inside. He was charged with making a terrorist threat. It'll be up to the judge if he is tried as an adult.

A 16-year-old called in a bomb threat at an Autauga County school in August, prompting an evacuation. Once upon a time it would be written off as childish stupidity. But he was charged with making a terrorist threat.

And it's not just teens. A guy who called himself a "Facebook whore" was sentenced to jail time this month for a post about blowing up a school in Prattville. He told a judge - this according to the Montgomery Advertiser - that he didn't intend to hurt anyone, but thought his friends would like it.

Not acceptable. No. Not wise, or cool, or funny, or defensible in any way. But the dimwit needs to get a clue. Not a criminal record as a terrorist or a premium spot in our jails.

Of course school officials and law enforcement agencies have to take serious threats seriously. They have a clear responsibility to check out credible dangers.

The SWAT team was right to knock on a Clanton man's door last month after he wrote on social media: "I feel like going on a killing spree today" while citing old employers as targets. "Things are going to get pretty ugly, they messed over the wrong person and it's not about to go down like that...I got 30 rounds and I'm trying to use the whole clip and some more."

It sounds pretty darn credible. Like a threat. If they didn't check it out we would no doubt crucify them as irresponsible.

But the opportunity for abuse is everywhere,

Like when an Abbeville teen got drunk and loud with a sheriff's deputy last year. He was arrested for underage drinking and resisting arrest, which seems just. But he was also popped for the felony charge of making a terrorist threat.

"He was just young and drunk," the sheriff told the Dothan Eagle. "He was kind of belligerent when they stopped him and he threatened to find their address and kill them."

Young and drunk and momentarily stupid should not equal terrorist.

It's too much. It's like we've lost all semblance of common sense. There is no room for childish error, no tolerance for childish mistakes. Even when those who make them are children.

Yeah, we have to acknowledge threats. But we need too to acknowledge when the biggest threat is our own over-reaction.