So soldiers can be trusted with weapons civilians can't have,
but can't be trusted with weapons civilians can have?
That's pretty much the standard Army-wide. Honestly, there's a lot of folks in the Army I don't trust with a weapon. Thankfully their jobs don't generally require its use.
You've never been in the service have you? Generally commanders are very selective in who gets duty that requires being armed, routine training at firing ranges and such, excluded. In addition during training, ammunition is carefully controled. Almost all weapons are stored in the arms room at all times and only checked out when required for specific duties.
I laugh whenever a TV show has a soldier shooting someone with his service weapon while on leave. Cannot happen, you cannot take a military weapon on leave.
This has me curious too. If you can't trust them with a weapon when off duty how do you just them with one during war time????