It has become an emblematic image of police militarization: a half-dozen heavily outfitted officers, assault rifles drawn, advancing on an African American man in a T-shirt with his hands way up.

The police – photographed in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer – are wearing helmets and goggles and knee pads and gas masks. The man is wearing a cap from Cabela's, the outdoors store.

The picture would seem to epitomize the kind of "wrong message" President Barack Obama denounced this week in unveiling new rules to ban "equipment made for the battlefield" from the arsenals of local police forces.

"We've seen how militarized gear can sometimes give people a feeling like there's an occupying force," Obama said. "So we're going to prohibit some equipment made for the battlefield that is not appropriate for local police departments."

Yet none of the equipment in the picture, apart from the camouflage uniforms, is mentioned in the new prohibitions. And interviews with government officials and experts suggest the new White House guidelines could fall miserably short of preventing scenes of police outfitted in military gear facing off with unarmed protesters in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, New York and beyond.