Actually, this may surprise you, but you are precisely wrong in that. Which is to say, your belief is not only wrong, it's actually the opposite of the truth. Assault rifles -- TRUE assault rifles -- were designed to wound, not to kill.
You see, one of the insights that led to the development of 'assault rifles', firing reduced-power cartridges (as most of them do), is that it is, from a military standpoint, better to wound your enemy than to kill him. Every time you kill a member of an opposing force, you reduce your enemy's effective strength by one. But wound him instead, and now your enemy has to leave another man behind to look after that wounded man, so each man you wound reduces his strength by two. Plus, he's now got to spare resources to medevac that man, and build and staff a field hospital to treat him. Wounding one of your enemy's men costs him MUCH more resources than merely killing one.
They have no other purpose. That's not necessarily true of other guns.
Well, in the first place, if your assumption about 'assault weapons' were true, it would be no less true of any other type of firearm. In the second place, it's actually considerably more true of, for example, a hunting rifle, the goal of which is not only to kill what you're shooting at, but wherever possible to kill it as instantly as possible with a single shot.
Historically, with certain exceptions (specialized target firearms, line-throwing guns, assault rifles), the primary purpose of all firearms is indeed to kill things. As you said, a gun is a tool, and it's a tool for killing. That said, if all you want to do is scare away an attacker (which, frankly, is the first choice of just about anyone who carries a gun for defence), isn't that goal most likely to succeed if you have the scariest-looking weapon possible? The more overwhelming and obvious your firepower advantage, the less likely you'll actually have to unleash it. The armed intruder who might brazen it out against a .22 revolver is very much less likely to fancy his chances against, say, an Uzi submachinegun.
(NOTE: This is not to say that I think a semi-automatic rifle is a good personal defense weapon. It isn't. It's too unwieldy, too slow to aim as such short ranges, and too likely by far to overpenetrate and hit someone two or three houses away. A pump shotgun is a much better choice. Not only is it easier to aim and much less likely to penetrate a wall, but that's a hell of a big scary hole in the end, and Hollywood has made the SHA-CHINK of the slide on a pump-action 12-guage a sufficiently widely-recognized sound that just racking the slide should be enough to loosen any ne'er-do-well's anal sphincter. My first wife once broke up a domestic-violence situation in exactly this manner without having to fire a shot.)
Re: Unbelievable
Assault rifles are built to kill.
Actually, this may surprise you, but you are precisely wrong in that. Which is to say, your belief is not only wrong, it's actually the opposite of the truth. Assault rifles -- TRUE assault rifles -- were designed to wound, not to kill.
You see, one of the insights that led to the development of 'assault rifles', firing reduced-power cartridges (as most of them do), is that it is, from a military standpoint, better to wound your enemy than to kill him. Every time you kill a member of an opposing force, you reduce your enemy's effective strength by one. But wound him instead, and now your enemy has to leave another man behind to look after that wounded man, so each man you wound reduces his strength by two. Plus, he's now got to spare resources to medevac that man, and build and staff a field hospital to treat him. Wounding one of your enemy's men costs him MUCH more resources than merely killing one.
They have no other purpose. That's not necessarily true of other guns.
Well, in the first place, if your assumption about 'assault weapons' were true, it would be no less true of any other type of firearm. In the second place, it's actually considerably more true of, for example, a hunting rifle, the goal of which is not only to kill what you're shooting at, but wherever possible to kill it as instantly as possible with a single shot.
Historically, with certain exceptions (specialized target firearms, line-throwing guns, assault rifles), the primary purpose of all firearms is indeed to kill things. As you said, a gun is a tool, and it's a tool for killing.
That said, if all you want to do is scare away an attacker (which, frankly, is the first choice of just about anyone who carries a gun for defence), isn't that goal most likely to succeed if you have the scariest-looking weapon possible? The more overwhelming and obvious your firepower advantage, the less likely you'll actually have to unleash it. The armed intruder who might brazen it out against a .22 revolver is very much less likely to fancy his chances against, say, an Uzi submachinegun.
(NOTE: This is not to say that I think a semi-automatic rifle is a good personal defense weapon. It isn't. It's too unwieldy, too slow to aim as such short ranges, and too likely by far to overpenetrate and hit someone two or three houses away. A pump shotgun is a much better choice. Not only is it easier to aim and much less likely to penetrate a wall, but that's a hell of a big scary hole in the end, and Hollywood has made the SHA-CHINK of the slide on a pump-action 12-guage a sufficiently widely-recognized sound that just racking the slide should be enough to loosen any ne'er-do-well's anal sphincter. My first wife once broke up a domestic-violence situation in exactly this manner without having to fire a shot.)