Nelson said the timing of the president's decision, against the backdrop of unrest in Charlottesville, Va., "reflects this administrations now open effort to escalate racial tensions in our country.''
Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights, said the Obama guidelines were adopted to promote the adoption of "a guardian, not warrior mentality'' among police when responding to local crises.
"Our communities are not the same as armed combatants in a war zone,'' said Gupta, who headed the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division during the Obama administration.
A measure of the controversy that has long shadowed law enforcement's use of such equipment was voiced by some Republican lawmakers who parted with the administration on the president's executive order.
"Americans must never sacrifice their liberty for an illusive and dangerous--or false--security,'' Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said. "The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm.''
Local access to the high-powered gear was put on national display in 2014 in Ferguson, Mo., where armored vehicles and heavily-armed police clashed with protesters for days following the police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old black man by a white officer.
The deployment of such equipment, President Obama argued at the time, cast the police as an "occupying force,'' deepening a divide between law enforcement and a wary community.
"We've seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like they're an occupying force, as opposed to a force that's part of the community that's protecting them and serving them," Obama said in announcing the ban in 2015.
The military gear ban was among a host of policing reform recommendations to flow from a White House advisory group formed in the aftermath of the Ferguson rioting.
The Task Force on 21st Century Policing, chaired by former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Laurie Robinson, a former assistant attorney general, called on law enforcement officials to "minimize the appearance of a military operation'' when policing mass demonstrations.
"Avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust," the task force urged.
The Obama order did allow for the limited use of other surplus — aircraft, wheeled tactical vehicles, mobile command units, battering rams and riot gear — on the condition that such equipment was approved by the federal government.
The surplus sharing agreement, also known as the "1033 program," was created by Congress nearly 30 years ago as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. It was originally intended to assist local law enforcement in drug investigations.
The program was expanded in 1997 to include all local law enforcement operations, including counter-terrorism. Since then, according to the government, more than $5 billion in gear has been transferred to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies.
"Much of the equipment provided through the 1033 program is entirely defensive in nature ... that protect officers in active shooter scenarios and other dangerous situations," the Trump administration proposal says.