Are cops being too paranoid?

One issue that comes up in discussion of police reform is the way in which police approach anyone they deal with on a daily basis as potentially a dangerous armed criminal. This leads to the fatal shooting of individuals where the police have assumed a person has a weapon when it’s really a cell phone, they assume they’re reaching for a weapon when they’re not, etc. The police seem to have a fundamental distrust of the public they deal with and assume the worst about anyone, even in something as seemingly harmless as a traffic stop.

Can the police behave any differently, though, given how armed Americans are overall? Maybe this is not how police proceed in countries with far fewer firearms in circulation, but maybe that’s how they have to proceed in the U.S.