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? My weapon of choice would be the current "curriculum" as it will drive the greatest number to suicide.
As far as weapons go, "assault" rifle is a meaningless term. The difference between a civilian model AK-47 and ANY other semi automatic rifle is only caliber and a variance in magazine size. The most "bang for the buck" would be a .22 semi. That being said, long guns are rarely used in armed assaults unless perpetrated by governments. Handguns are more likely to be used for the obvious reasons. Disarming the lawful just invites the lawless and the ruler. No matter who presents them, the stats bear this out. Highly armed segments of the populace have low violent crime rates for obvious reasons: Criminals are opportunists. One can only defend against the true psychopath. I believe that MOST of these mass killers are NOT true psychopaths as they are too risk averse to carry out their malfeasance where there is a high likelihood of an armed response. It is no accident that mass shootings
occur in officially disarmed places.