Posted on Wednesday, May 06, 2015 - 02:17 am:

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A quick-thinking Garland (Texas) police officer shot and killed two gunmen who opened fire at a controversial art exhibit featuring cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, police said Monday.

Police say the two gunmen were armed with assault rifles and wearing body armor when they pulled up to the Curtis Culwell Center shortly before 7 p.m. Sunday. They began shooting almost immediately and wounded an unarmed Garland ISD security guard who was with the officer. The officer returned fire and killed the gunmen.

from http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20150503 -breaking-gunfire-reported-at-anti-islam-event-at- garland-isd-facility.ece

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Posted on Wednesday, May 06, 2015 - 02:35 am:

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(CNN)It wasn't a fair fight.

On one side, you had two men in body armor, toting assault rifles and showing every willingness to open fire now and count their victims later. On the other, you had a security officer -- a traffic officer by day -- with a pistol.

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The officer who'd later be praised as a hero was parked in a patrol car in front of the first entrance, from the east, off Naaman Forest Boulevard into the center's parking lot. An unarmed Garland school district security officer sat in the car with him, ostensibly to check the identification of those coming in.

The event started, by all accounts, without a hitch around 5 p.m. (6 p.m. ET), and for nearly two hours nothing serious happened.

Until, that is, about 6:50 p.m., when a dark-colored vehicle pulled into the entrance the Garland officer and school district officer were blocking.

"When that car pulled up and stopped, those officers began to exit that vehicle, and two men exited the dark-colored sedan," Harn said. "Both of them had assault rifles, came around the back of the car and started shooting at the police car."

According to a law enforcement source close to the investigation, the two men had six guns -- a mix of assault-style semiautomatic rifles and handguns -- that are being traced back to various parts of Arizona.

Gunfire reverberated around the complex, from the two gunmen, and the armed officer.

A short time later, four members of a nearby SWAT team came in firing their high-powered rifles, according to a source familiar with the officers involved. But by the time they did, the Garland traffic officer was the only one standing.

The school district officer had been hit in the leg, according to Harn.

And the two attackers were already down on the ground by their car, having been shot by the traffic officer.

Within 15 seconds, the chaotic eruption was basically over.

Police vet: 'You cannot downplay what he did'
How?

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."

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