More on the heroic Texas cop who took down the Garland attackers:
He had a .45-caliber Glock pistol, a much less powerful weapon than the rifles used by the attackers, who have since been identified by federal law enforcement officials as Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi.
“There’s no advantage for a handgun over an assault rifle,” said Dick Fairburn, a veteran law enforcement officer who is a columnist for PoliceOne.com. “An assault rifle has more distance, more accuracy, more power, more penetration.
“You cannot downplay what he did there.”
Granted, the officer likely had on some sort of protective jacket. But Tom Fuentes, a former FBI assistant director and current CNN contributor, said that the thin Kevlar vests often worn by police would be useless against an assault rifle round that “will go through that like a hot knife through butter.”
The same can’t be said for bullets coming from the officer’s pistol: The attackers’ body armor likely would have blocked those.
Thus, aiming for the suspects’ torso — as officers are trained first to do, since it is their biggest possible target — is no longer an option. But still, somehow, the traffic officer managed to down both men in seconds.
“It speaks to his skill level,” Fairburn, who is a firearms trainer for law enforcement, said of the Garland officer. “In terms of weaponry, he was far outgunned. But he was far better trained.”