A U.S. Secret Service spokesman summed up an extraordinary afternoon at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida, in five chilling words: “We live in dangerous times.”

The spokesman made his assessment at a news conference on Sunday afternoon, just hours after someone was spotted with a semi-automatic AK-47 rifle just a few hundred yards from where Donald Trump was playing golf.

The incident is being considered by the FBI to be the second attempted assassination of the former president in as many months. Photos released by police appear to show a rudimentary sniper nest, and there will undoubtedly be pointed security questions about how someone got so close to Trump.

Details released during the press conference underscored how close Trump came to shooting — again — shortly after a gunman grazed his ear in Butler County, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Asked by reporters how far away the gunman spotted Sunday was from his apparent target, West Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said, “Probably between 300 and 500 yards — but with a rifle and a scope like that, that’s not a lot of distance.”

The security emergency began at 1:30 p.m. Sunday when the Secret Service reported shots fired. At the time, Trump was golfing with his friend and Republican real estate megadonor Steve Witkoff between the 5th and 6th holes of the 18-hole course.

Bradshaw explained that the area was surrounded by dense undergrowth—a security detail’s nightmare—which allowed the suspected would-be killer to position himself on the edge of the trail, largely out of sight. Federal agents revealed that in addition to his AK-47-style rifle and scope, the suspect had two backpacks and a GoPro video camera, which Bradshaw said indicated he intended to record his actions.

Immediately after the incident, initial analysis suggested that there were two conflicting stories.

The first story was about how vulnerable Trump was, even after security was beefed up following the Butler incident, and how easy it seemed for a heavily armed individual to gain access to the golf course and hide in the bushes.

As Bradshaw put it, if Trump had been a sitting president at the time, the Secret Service would never have allowed him to play golf in such an open environment. But “he’s not the sitting president, and so we’re limited to what the Secret Service deems possible.”

The second story is more positive. Unlike the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler County, which left the Secret Service facing serious questions about its competence and led to the firing of its then-director, Kimberly Cheatle, Sunday’s incident appears to cast the agency in a much rosier light.

The suspected shooter was spotted by a Secret Service agent acting as a forward guard, who was a gap or two ahead of Trump to keep an eye out for potential threats. Despite the thick greenery lining the track, the agent spotted a gun barrel peeking through the line and charged the suspect, firing four to six rounds.

“The Secret Service did exactly what they were supposed to do, and their agent did a fantastic job,” Bradshaw said.

From there, the suspect’s arrest also went smoothly. While being shot, the suspect dropped the gun and fled through the bushes, jumping into a black Nissan that he had presumably strategically positioned to be able to escape quickly. Also remarkable in the circumstances was that a passerby saw him flee and had the sense to take a picture of the vehicle, including the license plate.

Such is the power of surveillance technology in Florida that within minutes, the license plate was swiped through the state’s license plate readers. The escaped suspect was quickly followed to the I-95 freeway and promptly held at gunpoint.

As William Snyder, sheriff of neighboring Martin County, where the arrest was made, noted, the suspect was unarmed and appeared “relatively calm, not showing much emotion.”

The exemplary way in which federal and local law enforcement worked together to prevent what could have been a catastrophic event, followed by the full arrest of the suspect, will take a lot of the tension out of the situation as the inevitable blame game begins. But that other initial story is also striking and will demand answers.

How was it possible that Trump, after coming so close to a shooting in Pennsylvania, was able to play golf outdoors in an environment that seemed impossible to secure? What happens in a country with as painful a history of successful assassinations as America, when it sees a former president targeted not once, but twice in such a short period of time?

A beady-eyed Secret Service agent saved the U.S. from a potentially unthinkable disaster. Is that security enough?

“The threat level is high,” the Secret Service spokesman said. “We live in dangerous times.”