This is a local story for me, living in the phoenix metro area so I've got a different perspective on this.
1) He was not the only armed person at this meeting. He was the one the media focused on, but there were dozens others also armed (although not quite as explicitly as he was). The person mentioned in particular I believe was the only one with a rifle (the others mostly just had pistols).
2) His weapons were in plain sight and not held in any kind of threatening manner. In Arizona law that is legal. You are allowed to carry a weapon in plain sight as you wish (with a couple of minor exceptions) as long as it is in plain sight.
3) They were there to protest against obama and to take up their message of 2nd amendment gun rights. Perhaps not the best way of doing it, but I applaud them for having the balls to do so. I also think that by doing so and there not having been an incident shows just what gun rights advocates have been saying all along, that you are in no more danger by allowing guns then you are if they are banned.
Trust me if there was someone there who planned to harm the pres it would be the person you didn't know was armed. If you go back in history to all of assassination attempts do you really think if guns had been banned that they would have been stopped/caught? Do you think a gun ban would have stopped lee harvey oswald? Would it have prevented booth from shooting lincoln? Or even if you want to talk about something a bit more modern, how about the assassination attempt on Reagan's life?
The common thread through all of these is that the shooter concealed his weapon prior to the attack. No gun ban is going to stop that.
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