rifles o.o Like the one cop whose pepper spray wound up the attacker was a rural officer and the nearest back up was 40 minutes away and it sounded like he just had pepper spray, maybe there was something else in his car but idk. The other one was in a mall with a couple of other officers and a dog (one of the charges they arrested the guy on was trying to kill a police dog :( he had two big knives) so obviously they would not have wanted to pull guns out and start shooting or anything even if they had had handguns.