It did cause an interesting discussion, someone was raising the point on the matters of crowd control and psychology.
That if you have people moving around using guns as props rather than threatening weapons, and you send in people with guns to control them... There is a much greater chance that things will spill out of control, shots will be fired, people are much more likely to be killed, and thus cause a lot more political fallout and no-one wants to face that sort of political checks to pay. So have smaller number of unarmed people to handle those sorts of protesters is more likely to have a prestige hit, but reduce injuries and deaths.
While if you have unarmed crowds that might turn violent, and you send in people with guns, the people with guns generally won't have to shoot anyone, and the unarmed crowds are more likely to have some level of restraint. While if you had sent in people without guns to face them, its much more likely to turn physical.
Eh, how serious those ideas are, and whether it was part of the consideration rather than casual class/racial/radical politics issues or a form of justification is another matter.
But it was an interesting idea.
So for that devils advocate position,