Police found pickup truck full of bombs and guns near Capitol

Again you can not brandish (“parade”) a gun without a lawful reason.

I have a concealed carry permit in a state that allows open carry. I have no interest in drawing attention to myself. Nor would I draw my weapon without real fear for my life. Beyond the fact that I would hurt someone, which I am not interested in doing if there’s a viable alternative, the costs of defending yourself (lawyers, probably losing my job, etc) after a shooting would bankrupt most people.

For me, the idea of using a gun is as the last line of defense.

There's really too much nuance and variables to argue this easily such as state of society, how rich or impoverished they are, how healthy or unhealthy they are - including their education - how open their heart and mind is, and so on.

A strong stable or stabilizing system - democracy in this case - that is capable of returning to the homeostasis with a forward-evolving movement will take an impressive attack to knock it down.

Of course there are bad actors who are trying to do such a thing, and due to all factors Biden won the election - and the Democrats won the Senate as well - so they can implement policy without being blocked by Republicans (nor extorted by giving $ trillions to corporations leveraging the need for stimulus-survival cheques) - and hopefully they implement new policies that will strengthen America and its democracy.

I believe Andrew Yang's core policies are the answer to breaking apart the duopoly and taking away the amalgamated power of the small handful of mainstream media channels (TV and newspapers) that amplify and support the duopoly: Democracy Dollars, Journalism Dollars, Ranked Choice Voting, Freedom Dividend/UBI, and Government Healthcare Option ("Medicare For All") to compete against the status quo - so people can become healthy and do their best to prevent dis-ease.

I agree with you that the State is an additional layer to reduce, limit, de-risk the potential of tyranny - perhaps then private gun ownership then becomes a layer against each State potentially becoming tyrannical, and if the State starts clamping down on people with bad behaviour - control-oppression-violence - to too severe of a degree, then arguably people will start moving to another State that is in line with their own values.

It's all about organization, alignment, and readying for defending against the different layers of potential conflict - whether citizen to citizen, citizen to State, citizen to Federal, State to Federal, Federal to Federal - the fight for democracy-freedom vs. tyranny, globally.

Edit to add: It's important when reasoning to understand how these situations unfold - they don't happen overnight and there is time to organize. There will be peak moments that act as signals - whether things are evolving or devolving: Biden was elected is one signal from one side, the continued attempted coup the other day, where sadly a handful of people died, is another signal from the side; like the genocide of Uighurs in China by the CCP is a signal from one side, on global scale. Generally the side that acts first in a physical violence means will be the less rational one, more aggressive and using anger which will blind them to some degree - "blind rage." This is why economic pressure via multi-lateral trade agreements between Democracies is the best starting solution - and with other policy can quickly reenforce the internal strength of those currently leaking economic value, ROI et al, to a bad actor who won't fall in line with freedom, health, non-violence, and so on; none of this is to say the US isn't guilty in some areas of unnecessary violence.

This is the problem with the gun control debate you either control all of them or none of them.

The assault weapons ban did absolutely squat to prevent gun violence in the US.

Being able to attach a bayonet or having to pin and weld a flash suppressor I mean sorry compensator or w/e they’ll call it to pass the requirements isn’t going to make a gun less deadly.

Honestly I don’t know what can be done in the US at this point there’s more guns than people, and despite the so called ammo shortages there are probably enough rounds out there to kill every person on the planet 10 times over.

There little that any gun control legislation other than a complete ban and confiscation campaign could do.

This is because if you look at gun violence you see essentially two groups neither of which could be prevented by stricter gun legislation.

One is people committing crimes/homicide with legally purchased firearms and passing all checks including any additional checks that any “sensible” gun legislation would introduce.

The other are people who obtain guns illegally by stealing them or buying them on the black or grey markets.

More background checks won’t stop them, especially not in the near term until guns become prohibitively expensive for most criminals to obtain but without confiscation that isn’t likely to happen.

There’s still gun violence in the UK as far as criminals go but that’s mostly limited to organized crime vs organized crime incidents other than that and the Irish border conflict related violence you can rally only get the odd crank that finds grandpa’s old shotgun with a few 50 year old hunting rounds.

Common criminals can’t afford to buy guns in the UK and many of them don’t want anything to do with firearms because of the response it would trigger.

People who own a gun in such countries know exactly why they own a gun. In any of those countries you would very unlikely be allowed a permit.

For example, here in Poland there are only two reasons for getting firearms permit: constant, hightened danger to your own life or when your actual job is to protect other people. In both cases the reason must be proven and documented.

Not to mention those that will result from COVID branching out from this event. Which - while less related - when considering the actions of the instigator are certainly notable.

DC has a ton of security, and it's basically only legal for them to possess the guns. Carrying guns openly in this area would lead to a quick arrest.

So - I think you're right that there was a lot of luck, but also there was a lot of preparation.