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True, this might not have helped, then...but it's a good argument for carry in all national parks.
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The argument that attacks can and do happen is a good reason for carry, but this incident is not a good argument for carry specifically because having a gun would not have changed the outcome in any manner. It is sort of like saying that a car crash where the car crashed into a bridge support at 100 miles an hour, killing the occupants, is a good reason for seatbelts because crashes can happen.
It would be completely different if the one of the adults actually witnessed the incident and could do nothing about it otherwise. That would be a better example substantiating the need for allowed carry. It would be completely different if in the story an adult was armed, say illegally, and managed to save the child. That would substantiate the argument that guns can be used effectively to stop such attacks and save lives.
Since the attack happened and none of the adults saw anything, then they obviously could not have intervened with a firearm and so this is not a good example to use to justify the argument that we need guns in the parks for protection.
Stephen Hererra's book on grizzly and black bear incidents has quite a number of examples where firearms could have been used to save people, incidents where firearms were used to save people, and several where firearms would not have worked out had they been present and even a couple of where firearms were present, but were not able to be used.
Based on his study on bear attacks (of all types and that occur for various reasons), this sort of through the tent attack quite likely resulted due to less than adequate camp cleanliness. It is likely that the bear was habituated to human food and/or to human presence.
The fact that the bear dragged the child such a distance is most likely because the bear had the intent to feed on the child. Bears acting defensively don't drag their victims long distances. Instead, they tend to engage them in place and the victim remains fairly close, if not right at the original attack location. When bears do drag off humans, as noted in the book, the distances are usually much shorter than 400 feet. Of course, it may be a lot easier for the bear to drag a child 400 feet than to drag an adult human and most of the described attacks were on adults.
Now, whether or not the bear had intended on preying on humans upon entry into the tent is uncertain since the behavior prior to the attack was not witnessed. The bear very well may have been after food brought along by the campers that it believed were in the tent, either because it smelled such food coming from the tent or smelled such food and knew from prior experience that there may be food in the tent.
As he notes, nothing is 100% and he did provide a couple of examples where campers were attacked in, or around their tents in spite of having meticulous campsites and having taken precautions. However, such events are very rare compared to those where the people simply screwed up and made themselves attractive to the local bears.