In the moments after a bullet nearly killed former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, he was surrounded by U.S. Secret Service (USSS) agents who then whisked him away to a nearby armored suburban. In the chaotic aftermath of the assassination attempt, images of the agents wielding Glock 19 GEN 5 MOS (Modular Optic System) 9mm pistols began to emerge. On closer inspection, these Glocks did not feature red dot-type optical ‘reflex’ sights, an upgrade that is now common even among small local police departments and across the civilian firearms marketplace.
The lack of this modern firearms feature seemed like a very odd choice for agents who could be tasked at any moment with engaging multiple assailants in the most chaotic, time-sensitive, and densely populated of situations. We reached out to SWAT team members, one current and one former, who told The War Zone they were also puzzled as to why the agents weren’t using red dot sights, especially since their Glocks are equipped to accommodate them. Although, from what we have learned, that may be in the process of slowly changing.
Mounted on top of the pistol’s slide, these micro-optics help shooters acquire a target faster and fire on it more quickly and more accurately, while also increasing their overall situational awareness, compared to traditional iron sights. Pistol-mounted optics have quickly gained massive popularity for both law enforcement and military applications and across the civilian market. While some training is required to transition to red dots as a primary sighting system, few have argued that doing so isn’t worth it. In addition, with most current red dot pistol configurations, iron sights can still be co-witnessed through the optical window for use if the optic fails.
“You can be proficient with iron sights too,” said Jeff Bruggeman, who served as a SWAT team member with the Fairfax City, Virginia, SWAT team for 18 years. “You don’t have to have a red dot system (RDS) on a pistol, but given some of the advantages of having it, I’m not quite sure why. The Secret Service is touted as a premier law enforcement agency. Why they wouldn’t use it is interesting.”
A current SWAT member for a different agency had a similar reaction.
“They are standard in the agency I’m with,” said the officer with 15 years of experience on his team who requested anonymity to speak freely. “I am surprised the [agents] don’t use them given the agency’s prestigious reputation.”
Both said that the optical sights are a major improvement over iron sights.
Pistol-mounted red dot sights enable the user “to acquire a target faster, with both eyes open so they don’t lose their peripheral vision and if they transition from a shoulder weapon with a red dot to a pistol with a red dot, their brain doesn’t have to switch gears like it would going to standard three-dimensional pistol sights,” Bruggeman said.
The current SWAT officer concurred.
“You don’t have to take your eyes off of what you intend to assess and then possibly engage,” he said. “You don’t move your eyes to that. It comes into view. It creates the ability for more observation, essentially over that platform, so you have a little more of your battle space in front of you.”
Both men said the optical sights are fairly recent additions to their kit, coming in the past few years. The current officer said his department evaluated studies on how they work and then had several rounds of testing “with different control groups.” Those groups examined the optic sights at long and short distances and under varying circumstances. The tests showed that the optical sighs offered increased accuracy across a range of distances and situations.
They also tested how well the optic sights handled in situations requiring a quick draw.
Some have suggested that the optical sights, which protrude above the weapon, might be bulky and impede the ability to quickly react to a dynamic situation. That wasn’t the case, said the active SWAT officer.
“There’s been no deficit in the sense of bulky,” he said.
Optical sights, however, are not infallible. Unlike iron sights, they require a power source to work. And, like any electronic device, they are susceptible to malfunction and damage, although many types are extremely rugged and well-proven with widespread use for years now in U.S. law enforcement, military, and civilian applications.
“They are great tools to have on your weapon system but the two main weaknesses are a dead battery and water getting on your lens,” said Bruggeman. “Water distorts the red dot image on glass.”
Enclosed pistol optics, which are quickly becoming more popular, where the red dot projects within two sealed panes of glass, makes it so rain, snow, dirt, and debris cannot get between the emitter and the glass it is projected on.
Bruggeman added that while working with the Secret Service on presidential and candidate details, he did not see them using the optical sights. That was not, however, something that he thought unusual because they were not widely used at the time.
Some USSS personnel at the rally had pistol optics.
A member of the USSS Counter Assault Team, known as the ‘CAT,’ was seen with one on his Glock 47. An elite unit of USSS operators, CAT team members are selected from a fraction of those who apply. They are uniformed and more heavily armed than plainclothes agents, sporting AR15-pattern assault rifles, night vision goggles, expendables like flash-bangs grenades, and heavier body armor. The officer seen below who took position between the line of fire and Trump sports a Glock 47 with an Aimpoint Acro2 enclosed red dot sight.
This would make sense as CAT units are specially equipped for dealing with heavily armed and resilient threats while the other agents can extract the protectee from the scene. Then again it would be outright bizarre if these teams were not equipped with pistol optics at all.
The Secret Service declined to talk about why its plainclothes agents do not carry red dot optics on their pistols.
“Out of concern for operational security, the U.S. Secret Service does not discuss the means and methods used for our protective operations,” a USSS spokesperson said. However, the head of a union representing federal law enforcement officers told us that the USSS is starting to field optical sights.
“I am being told by a USSS Agent that optics are currently being phased in and all USSS agents will eventually have them,” Matthew Silverman, National President of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA) told The War Zone. “There is no set standard that all agents need to have optics now, however, they are being issued to agents who recently graduated the academy.”
This would make some sense as training can occur from early on with new agents, but red dot optic transition training is extremely well established and effective for law enforcement officers of all experience levels.
Jeff James, a retired USSS Special Agent in Charge, suggested a reason why the Secret Service has been slow to adopt the use of optical sights on their Glocks.
“We never had them when we used Sig-Sauers,” said James, who retired in 2018 and is now Police Chief of Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh. “Optics can fail. If people aren’t able to shoot well with iron sites, and their optics get damaged during a gunfight, fall, fist fight, or the batteries die, you need to lean on the iron sites.”
“I don’t know specifically the rationale that the Secret Service has for not incorporating optics, but I do know that optic failure is a concern,” James added.
Considering recent events, it will be interesting to see if the USSS accelerates a transition to red dot pistol optics for all its agents, especially considering the weapons they already carry were specifically built to accommodate them. In the meantime, tried and true iron sights will soldier on. Still, it’s hard to consider it anything but odd that one of the holdout law enforcement entities for widely adopting this technology is the same one specifically tasked with protecting the most threatened individuals in the most high-risk of circumstances.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com