Two people were killed and one person critically injured in a shooting at a church in the Fort Worth, Texas suburb of White Settlement on Sunday morning. According to KTVT in Fort Worth, a man armed with a shotgun walked up to an individual serving communion and fired. One witness told the television station that the suspect was then shot by an armed churchgoer.

“It was the most scariest thing. You feel like your life is flashing before you. I was so worried about my little one,” Isabel Arreola said.

During the incident, two men died from their injuries and another man was critically injured. Authorities believe the gunman is among the three but it’s unknown if he was killed or is injured.

The identities of the victims have not yet been released.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about this situation, but clearly things could have been a lot worse were it not for the fact that someone was able to stop the threat because they were armed.

According to WFAA-TV in Dallas, the church’s service was being livestreamed at the time of the attack.

A live stream of the worship service shows a person wearing a large coat stand up and then pull out what appears to be a rifle or a shotgun. The shooter appears to fire twice before another person appears to shoot back.

Many people in the congregation ducked under church pews while others rushed toward the shooter, holding up handguns, the video shows.

A church leader starts telling people to quiet down and be seated.

“Everything is under control. Our security team did everything they needed to do,” the person said.

He urged everyone to stay calm and file out of the sanctuary. He said one church member was harmed.

“We had a gentleman that came in armed to do harm,” the church leader says.

The fact that the West Freeway Church of Christ had an armed security team in place who were quickly able to respond may have saved countless lives. Even as anti-gun pundits are tweeting their objections to the idea of Jews keeping and bearing arms for self-defense in the wake of Saturday night’s attack on a Hanukkah gathering in New York, the chuch security team in White Settlement, Texas just demonstrated the effectiveness of being able to fight back.

Shooting the person who is trying to kill you or others is absolutely a solution to stopping the person who’s trying to kill you.#SelfDefenseIsAHumanRight https://t.co/HUuAAv5SJP

— Cam Edwards (@CamEdwards) December 29, 2019

We don’t need to know all the facts about Sunday’s shooting at the West Freeway Church of Christ (though they will emerge in the hours and days to come) to understand that the faster you can have an armed response to an armed attack, the sooner that attack will end. No matter how you feel about guns, gun owners, the NRA, Second Amendment Sanctuary resolutions, or “assault weapons”, to deny that simple truth is to deny reality.

We’ll have more coverage on the shooting in White Settlement here on Bearing Arms, but in the meantime if you’re the praying kind please keep the congregants and their families in your prayers today.

**Update**

According to a reporter for WFAA-TV, the shooter was killed by the armed parishioner.

UPDATE: The shooter is one of the deceased this morning, according to MedStar — at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement. Video shows an armed church member took the shooter down with a single shot.

— Jason Whitely (@JasonWhitely) December 29, 2019

***Update***

Guntalk’s Tom Gresham highlights a still frame of the church’s livestream during the attack. You can see the suspect in the corner of the sanctuary with his shotgun, and at least one armed defender preparing to fire.

Attacker (with shotgun) is top center. Defender (with handgun) is top left. Defender with handgun stopped the slaughter. https://t.co/Cdb4K4N5Rf

— Tom Gresham (@Guntalk) December 29, 2019