Normally it would be, but unfortunately in a country where small portion of the population literally stockpile powerful guns permitted by law, I would, as a responding LEO, want to be prepared for the worst..

It's not merely a matter of stockpiled firearms, because, well, you know how it goes: "guns don't kill people".

I think it's also a matter of urban gangsta warfare going on since time immemorial. The organized crime is rampant, and while the races change, the adversaries stay more or less the same. Since the 80s or so, you've had Crips and Bloods and everyone in between, with all their rap-video braggadoccio, ready to have a showdown with police at the drop of a hat. Ice-T, 2Pac, NWA, the flames have been stoked, and I mean, I guess it's not their fault, because it takes two to tango. The police have geared up and gotten ever-more militarized and hostile to ordinary citizens, wielding technology to match. So there's been an escalation.

And that's why we have #BlackLivesMatter today. Not because cops are inherently evil and shooting innocents on purpose, but because both sides have been warring for decades, and that makes for itchy trigger fingers.

So I think if pranksters are misusing SWAT teams for hoaxes and weaponizing them against their Fortnite adversaries, then perhaps it's a wake-up call to have a ceasefire, a disarmament, and both sides (or all sides) to stand down and rethink why we're all here.

Agreed. I was going to add at the end of my comment something along the lines of

"If just the police isn't good enough, we find ourselves further down an unpleasant spiral than we thought we were".

I also agree with the person to whom you're replying though.

SWAT are the police. They're just normal officers with squad-based training that get mobilized when particularly-nasty situations are called in. A task force of sorts, kinda like the Power Rangers-- just normal kids until the supervillains show up, then they do a costume change and show up to assume their specific role in the response.

"The police" don't show up to calls with reinforced vehicles, ballistic helmets, vests, and shields, and an arsenal of assault weapons to deal with extensive threats. At best, beat cops have an anti-stab vest, a 9mm, a flashlight, and their choice of a shotgun or AR-15 in the car. It takes nothing to gun down a pair of cops.

We expect too much of law enforcement in these situations IMO. The military has intelligence units and recon teams to provide actionable advice. The cops are working with an anonymous call, unknown entities and unknown locations; they have to figure everything out ad-hoc in an urban warfare scenario. It's chaos. Imagine being told you have 5 minutes to introduce a change to a production distributed environment you've never even seen, and either you or an innocent civilian are summarily executed at random for each error you make. Those are the stakes they're working with, and they're nowhere near as smart as you.

Mistakes get made, which is on them, but calling them in as a prank is monstrous for everybody involved. It's just fucking evil.