A 16-year-old boy, we’ll call him Dude, decides he’ll fund his springtime needs by robbing a local convenience store. The kid doesn’t have a handgun, so he steals his daddy’s .22-caliber rifle.

There’s also a box of ammunition in his daddy’s desk drawer, so he grabs that, too. Dude decides he’ll wait until late at night to stage his robbery. Fewer customers, fewer witnesses, he figures.

It’s a Wednesday night around 11 o’clock when Dude comes to town armed with daddy’s trusty .22 rifle wrapped in a baby blanket. The kid peers through the store’s front window and is satisfied the clerk is alone.

Time for Dude to make his move — a dramatic move. He slams open the door, takes a few steps inside the store, and fires a single shot into the ceiling as he announces: "This is a stickup!"

The clerk reaches under the counter for a billy club he keeps for such occasions, but the kid brandishes his .22 at the clerk. "Do that and I’ll plug ya," says the kid in his best western drawl.

The clerk backs up and raises his hands high, assuring the kid he’ll do nothing foolish. It’s at that moment that Dude realizes his .22-caliber rifle is now empty. "That’s okay," the kid muses, "I got plenty of ammo in my pocket."

The kid digs out a bullet and tries to slide it into the breech, but it won’t go in — it doesn’t fit!

I should explain that the rifle is a .22, but the ammo Dude grabbed from his daddy’s desk is for a .40-caliber handgun. The larger caliber bullet is about twice the size of the .22.

"It won’t go in...it won’t go in," cries the kid as he attempts to force a .40-caliber bullet into a .22-caliber rifle bore.

It’s at this point that a customer standing in front of the beer cooler decides this is, indeed, the magic moment to throw a flying tackle at Dude. Guess the clerk wasn’t alone, after all.

Now all the prosecutor has to decide is whether to charge Dude as a juvenile or as an adult.