Coming from a country where the police spends more time developing people skills than doing gun practice, it never ceases to puzzle me how the solution to any situation appears to be to shoot anything that moves on the flimsiest of assumptions, then figure out what happened afterwards.

Now, I appreciate that the police in the US does face a population with more guns on hand than the Norwegian police does; this surely goes some way towards explaining their apparent eagerness to shoot first, then ask questions later.

However, what puzzles me most is this - if the police around here shot but one innocent, there'd be cries for resignations, perhaps even going all the way to the secretary of justice; we collectively would expect - nah, demand - that the police come up with policies and training which would make it less likely that another, similar incident would ever occur, &c.

So - the demonstrations following some police shootings aside, is there any significant push in the US to drive the police towards less lethal encounters with the public it is to serve and protect?

Say, requiring better people skills, more use of non-lethal weapons (and, if sufficiently effective non-lethal weapons do not yet exist - to have them developed), more passive safety for police officers (say, if you are wearing body armour which will stop a cal. 50-round, maybe you do not have to fire the first shot) etc?