Some of it is likely them wanting to protect themselves, but another aspect is that the last few years must have surely make the police afraid to act and pull a trigger. It could end their life if they make a mistake.
We need to go back to people having a personal responsibility for their own well being which involved not being a dick by doing something that could get you shot.
I have been in law enforcement for nearly 30 years and I am ready to hang it up and walk away. Police officers in the U.S. are afraid to do their job for fear of being prosecuted by activist District Attorneys. I am not suggesting that is what happened in Uvalde, Texas. There are places where I live/work where officers are not allowed to go to in the performance of their duties because their police chief/sheriff is afraid their officers will be prosecuted if they have to use deadly force. As a result, criminals go apprehended.
I am also tired of people in the U.S. and other places replacing their ancestors' deities with government. Whenever a tragedy like Uvalde happens there is a form of the Texas Two-Step - First, point fingers and blame and second, look to the government pass another law. It is as if laws are magical incantations that will generate a circle of protection.
Advocating that only the state (police/military) have access to firearms gives government a monopoly on deadly force. Saying "Only police officers should have guns" is a logical fallacy. Police officers are only people. If you hire an assassin to murder someone for you, both you and the assassin are guilty of murder.
If you call the police because an axe murderer is breaking through your front door to come kill you, and the police shoot and kill the axe murderer, you are just as responsible for the axe murderer's death as you would be if you pulled the trigger. To detach yourself from the axe murderer's death because the police officer you called to your house pulled the trigger is disingenuous at best. You certainly not on a higher moral ground.
Police officers are just human beings. They are private citizens. Sir Robert Edmond Peel, founder of the first civilian police department in history (London Metropolitan Police Department), gave us the Nine Peelian Principles of Policing - #7
- To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
"That's your job!" is the absolute most amoral statement I have every heard.