Game Creation Urgent Assistance

I just have no idea where to even start for question #1. Like would I just make a variables? The variable being called, for example “has weapon” and then I could make a statemachine inside my animation blueprint that says if I do have a weapon I can then transition into my sword and shield animations, but if I don’t have a weapon then I would just stay in my normal animations without a weapon. Is that basically what I would need to do for question number 1? If it is, then maybe I could try and figure out how to do that since I’m not too knowledgeable on animation blueprints lol. I basically just need to know how to actually make my weapon appear and disappear when I call the variable “has weapon”