A family of six sitting at a gas pump in Springfield, Missouri was randomly targeted by a man with a large knife Sunday night.

Luckily for them, they are citizens who wisely exercise the right to bear arms, and credit having a gun with saving their lives.

On Sunday evening, Katie Claxton was sitting in a car with her four young children while her husband was pumping gas, when a man wielding a large knife approached her vehicle. Claxton said she cringes to think what might have happened if her husband hadn’t pointed a gun at the man and scared him off. “Our Second Amendment right to carry is what saved our lives,” Claxton said. “If we didn’t have our right to carry, I feel like we wouldn’t be here today.” Claxton said she reached over to try to lock the doors as the man approached, but she accidentally rolled down the window. Claxton said the man opened the door, leaned into the car and brandished a long knife. Claxton said she yelled for her husband Matt to get his gun, and the man then began to leave. “He said ‘You’re lucky he has a gun,'” Claxton said. “And then he shut the door and started to back away.” Claxton said her husband pointed his Beretta handgun at the man and called 911 as the man slowly walked away.

The”ballistic attitude adjustment” provided by Max Claxton and his Beretta pistol seems to have thwarted a potential carjacking.

After the man walked away, the Claxton’s called 911 and followed the man at a distance from their vehicle until police officers arrived, alarmed as he tried to open the doors of other cars on the road in what appears to be potential carjacking attempts.

Springfield Police took 42-year-old David Middleton into custody without incident, and charges are pending.

The Claxton’s defensive gun use is the most common type of defensive firearms use in the United States, where the mere presence of a firearm and the potential for its use drives criminals away. Defensive gun use accounts for 500,00-3,000,000 defensive gun uses every year in the United States.