The stop was made at night in a dimly lit rural area.
That's why they have these fancy newfangled inventions called flashlights. And the point is you never even established he was armed, despite saying very explicitly that you would have killed him before establishing that if he had any unnamed item in his hand.
All I needed was reasonable suspicion. If I was told by an officer at a traffic stop to exit the vehicle slowly, with my EMPTY hands clearly VISIBLE, why on earth would I do anything else?