I chose the wording of "shoot back for a change" very deliberately. Cops act tough and intimidate people who they know can't fight back, but are cowards when society actually needs armed peace-keeping.
If the police aren't used to confronting armed threats, then clearly in the vast majority of cases they shouldn't need to be armed themselves.
I'm saying that the stark difference in those officers' performance vs their usual behavior shows that they usually expect to not be facing armed threats. Society is worse because they usually go into situations thinking "I'm armed and they aren't", and would improve if they weren't armed by default.
It wouldn't have helped in Uvalde if police weren't armed by default, but I'm not sure anything would have helped, because they already had all the tools they needed for that situation.
If the police aren't used to confronting armed threats, then clearly in the vast majority of cases they shouldn't need to be armed themselves.