Does "assault weapon" mean anything that can be used as a weapon to assault another person? Like baseball bats, 2x4s, steak knives, cars, steel pipes, odd objects d'art, folding chairs, fertilizer, fire arms, etc? Sounds extreme to ban all of those things. Maybe we should just outlaw murder and assault.
Oh yeah? Sure its for self defense. What if someone gets an assault rifle for the purpose of "self defense" and then uses that to kill someone? Sure other people with guns might kill the aggressor. But what if that guy already killed someone? Just one person. What if that person was you? Or one of your family members?
And that stupid argument that says we need to outlaw every other thing that could kill or harm people (i.e. gravity, knives, bats) if we ban assault weapons. Just think this way. If you were going to kill a bunch of kids in a school, what would be your weapon of choice? A knife? A shotgun? A pistol? A piece of wood?
Maybe something that can spit out the most projectiles per second? i.e.
An assault rifle?