I’d never heard of White Settlement, Texas until 2019 when a gunman thought he was going to commit a mass shooting in a church. Instead, he got shot in the head in a rather impressive feat of marksmanship under pressure. The whole thing was caught on video and it was rather glorious.

It became a key point of discussion when talking about the right to keep and bear arms. After all, it was an attack that ended rather suddenly.

And from there, I haven’t thought much about the place.

That is until this news broke yesterday.

Stacey King’s home surveillance video shows a van driving through his neighborhood on Jason Lane around 5 a.m. Tuesday.

About 30 minutes later after someone called 911 about the suspicious van being parked on the same street, police say they found the driver experiencing a mental health issue with a handgun in his lap. 

Officers removed the man from the vehicle and found a rifle, AR-style pistol, body armor and two explosive devices.

“If you have that kind of stuff on you, you’re planning something,” King said. “I mean, eventually, you’re thinking about it. I don’t see any other reason to have it.”

White Settlement Police Det. Laura Gonzalez says the suspect was taken into custody and transported to a medical facility. Once criminal charges are filed, his name will be released. 

“He did acknowledge to officers that those were improvised explosive devices,” she said. “What we can say is that it appears he’s from Oklahoma.”

To call this troubling would be a mild understatement.

The bomb squad did come in to deal with the explosives, thankfully, and no one was hurt, but we’re left wondering just what the hell was happening in the first place.

Now, it seems the individual had family in the neighborhood, but we don’t know if they were accomplices, targets, or nothing at all. Right now, we don’t know anything except that there’s been an arrest.

As for the firearms, since we don’t know who the suspect is, we can’t even say anything about how they were obtained or anything. Right now, there are just a lot of questions.

However, what facts we know are important.

First, regardless of how he got the guns–be it lawfully or illegally–we also know he had improvised explosive devices which are as illegal as it gets. Not knowing exactly what kind of explosives were used is a bit of a sticky thing because there are legal explosives. Most of the really scary ones are prohibited or at least tightly controlled, but there are all kinds of ways to build bombs with stuff that’s perfectly legal.

Yet the act of making it into a bomb is illegal, especially like it seems this guy did.

If he’d do that, he’d definitely get guns illegally for whatever it was he had planned.

I sincerely hope we soon learn what he had in mind. That would tell us a lot about his motivations and goals, and it might also tell us a lot about what kind of threats we’re facing in general.

I, for one, will be keeping my eye out for more information.