Texas law protecting armed churchgoers debated after congregant kills gunman at Sunday service

Top Texas officials on Monday cited the actions of several armed churchgoers who subdued a gunman in their sanctuary this weekend as a model of how Americans should protect themselves from potential mass shooters.

The attack, after which two church members and the gunman were dead, came two years after the Texas legislature passed a law that authorized anyone with a concealed-carry license to bring their weapon into houses of worship. That law was a response to the 2017 attack on a church in Sutherland Springs that left 26 people dead before a local resident shot the gunman outside the building and forced him to flee.

The shooter who attacked West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, a suburb of Fort Worth, on Sunday was killed by a single shot from church member Jack Wilson, a former reserve sheriff’s deputy and Army veteran. Wilson, who owns a shooting range in nearby Granbury, said he started training fellow members to be a part of the church’s volunteer security team when it launched after the Texas law passed.

“If there is any church in this state, in America, that was prepared for this, it was this church,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said at a news conference Monday. “They had done their training. And I think that you could see it in the results.”

He credited the new law with making the armed congregants’ quick responses possible, calling it a “model of what other churches and other places of business need to focus on.”