Don't kid yourself. There is nothing new about this.
Ain't that the truth. In 1970, while in Basic at Ft Campbell, I got 5 rounds in my ammo pouch for guarding the Navy installation (rumored to store nukes, but also regular ammo) inside the post. There were NO instructions as when to lock and load, much less fire.
At one Guard summer camp, my very worried captain told me he had to pick up $50,000 in cash for our payroll, and the supply depot wouldn't issue him any .45 ammo because it was "too much paperwork". So I drove in to town, and bought a box of buckshot at a hardware store, and carried a loaded riot gun while he had his empty .45
Basically, the US military does not trust its troops with loaded weapons, unless it's in a war zone, and everything is a free fire area. Safe gun handling is taught for a firing range, but not for anything in the real world, off the range. I knew more about firearms safety in the field from my hunter safety classes, taken when I was a kid, than from what the Army taught me.
"Elite" military forces get plenty of range time, and are also taught a lot more about safe gun handling. But for the other 99% of the military, all you're expected to know is "keep the muzzle pointed downrange" while at the firing range. That's because military thinking assumes the only time a troop needs to use a weapon is in a full-blown war with hordes of screaming gooks coming across the wire. That's why using our troops as guards for critical sites in this crisis is just a bad joke.