The old cliché goes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And it was that preventative approach that the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office took Monday when notified that a student at a county school had a firearm.

With the images from Columbine High School and Virginia tech University still burned into the minds of many Americans, it is important that situations like these are never taken lightly or overlooked.

The sheriff’s office immediately investigated and determined that the third-grade student only had a BB gun and that it did not appear there was any malicious intent by the child.

Although this may have been a false alarm, it can also serve somewhat as a test to see how local agencies will respond if something like this ever occurred for real.

Hopefully that is the question we will never have to answer.

We applaud the sheriff’s office for its quick and serious approach to the matter. Nothing like this should ever be taken for granted. Thankfully, in this case, it was much ado about nothing.

But that doesn’t change how the schools, law enforcement and other emergency response agencies are supposed to respond and it is encouraging to know that our agencies do the right thing when needed.

Now, let’s hope they are never needed to at all.