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Notes -
I'm pretty close to a gun rights absolutist, but it's worth mentioning that being armed isn't actually a very good defense against assassination. As you point out in the first link, bombing is a common means of assassination; shooting bombs sounds cool, but probably won't do much to prevent a car-bomb from taking out a target. In the event that an assassin does engage with a firearm, a competent one is likely to choose the Oswald approach of firing an accurate, high-powered rifle. Carrying a pistol isn't going to do much against someone with a 6.5 Creedmoor sighted in at 200 yards, and the accuracy at that distance is pinpoint.
To the extent that firearms are useful as a self-defense tool, I would guess that they have at least as much utility for a convenient store worker as a politician.
But the issue is less the utility of the tool than the specificity of the threat. Moreover, Marcus Foster was killed with a handgun, not by a bomb or high-powered rifle.
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I'd go so far as to say that a personal firearm is significantly less useful to protect yourself from assassins and terrorists, as your personal firearm has zero intimidation value against an ideological and/or crazy assassin. The vast majority of defensive gun uses do not feature the gun actually being fired; in most the criminal gives up after the gun is brandished and he realizes the citizen is armed. The average political assassin is figuring on dying in the process to begin with, the average carjacker is not.
That said, in casual conversation, I've said that if I were a presidential family member with Secret Service protection, I would insist on having a personal sidearm. Whatever training I have to take, whatever test I have to pass. Not because I'd imagine being particularly useful, but because I wouldn't want to die crouching and hiding uselessly. I'd rather, as a matter of personal pride, die at least pretending to do something useful. So I can see a motivation to carry beyond actual effectiveness against assassins.
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