If you the person called on to help when things get violent, I'd like you to have an appropriate tool or two along with the training to use them.
No need to make the jump to the ridiculous extreme some federal grant programs have made many a small town SWAT Team.
Just like how the murder rate in various countries around the world is not tied to the (legal) ownership rate of firearms, or the countries gun laws, I suspect the rate of officer deaths is probably not tied to (legal) gun ownership, or if the officers are armed on a regular basis or not.
Despite American paramilitary SWAT type teams, there's plenty of other countries where the Police walk around with SMG's all the time as part of their patrol gear, and I'll bet some are more and some are less violent than the U.S., U.K., and some have higher and lower rates of officer death.
Socioeconomic, demographic, and cultural attitudes probably dwarf guns, private legal ownership, private illegal ownership, or officer armament in terms of causation for the police murder rate per country.
