That doesn't mean that they can't do more de-escalation or take other steps, but the high prevalence of guns does seem like it would be a contributing factor.
(I realize this touches a hot topic (guns) but it's an honest question, and sympathetic to law enforcement.)
Maybe it's to do with having guns?
(Don't get me wrong, what those protestors did was senseless and the epitome of entitlement.)
This is a highly misleading way of describing the situation.
The police set up a traffic stop to arrest them. They fled the stop. Finicum told the police he wasn't going to surrender and that they'd have to shoot him. He reached for his gun in his pocket, and then he was shot.
If black men were only being killed by police after fleeing arrest, refusing to surrender, challenging the police to shoot them, and then reaching for a gun...then we wouldn't have much of a police violence problem.