There is no rational reason for which an American civilian should want to own an assault weapon.

Given the recent political discussion about "assault weapons", and the general lack of such debates here on DDO, I felt it was time to instigate just such a debate.First, I'll state that this debate is to be taken in good faith. If there is some assertion that is made, it will stand unless challenged. If it is challenged, then the opponent must provide support for the assertion at the earliest possible convenience, and argument from authority/tradition/law is certainly insufficient to such a task.In the discussion of what this debate is to be about, I would forward two acceptable definitions of the particular variety of the sufficiet "assault weapon" feature which we will be debating over: Assault Weapon: any firearm which is capable of the semi-automatic discharge of 7 or more continuous rounds. Assault Weapon: any rifle or shotgun which is equipped with a pistol grip. What constitutes a pistol grip is a fairly "fuzzy" definition; I would say that such grips generally involve a protusion from the body of weapon or some style of grip around which a hand may be wrapped, though a mere hole for a thumb to be placed through the stock is not sufficient for such a classification. "Civilian" here means any indiviual who is not engaged in current military operations, or acting at the time in official police, or performing currently in contracted personnel or property security capacities, or a person acting with unethical intent.It is, of course, my burden in the initial argument to canvass across the feasible situations in which a civilian may in the course of time have need of a firearm, and show logically or with evidence that no such situation requires an assalt weapon specifically, and that firearms which are not assault weapons are wholely sufficient or even preferable for the task. It is my opponent's burden in the initial argument to contrive a situation in which civilians would necessarily need an assault weapon rather than some other "lesser" for of firearm to service such a rationally expected task.As per the resolution these must be situations of rational need; one person against overwhelming numbers of armed assailants is not a situation where the civilian would be rational to fight back in, nor is it a situation where just such a civilian is rationally likely to end up. Further, unethical uses of guns (to threaten and/or commit murder, robbery, theft, rape, or any other clearly unethical action) are also excluded; a premise here is that such activities are not rational among a society of persons.With these understandings in mind, I propose the following rules:1) First round is acceptance*, second round is argument, third round is rebuttal and additional supporting arguments, fourth round is pure rebuttal and final round is closing.2) Responses shall be directed towards the previous rounds(s) only.3) *CON may go first; if CON uses his first round for argument, PRO agrees his last round shall be a blank post. For the purposes of voting and posting "rounds" shall be offset by this one post.4) No direct "vote pandering". An argument ought stand on its own, without appeals to emotion or ad hominem. The only place it is acceptable is to provide a proposed RFD is at the end of closing, and it must still be free of appeal to emotion, outright lies, or ad-hom attacks.5) No "sneaky ****erism". This is defined as making declarations to win or troll an argument rather than making an attempt to investigate whether a claim is actually valid or supported by reason. The winning argument here is to be determined as that argument which stands up to reason, not which argument/person people subjectively like more. In accepting, CON agrees that any votes which do not reflect an objective evaluation of the arguments (subjective votes) are invalid and to be ignored during final evaluation, retracted, reported, and/or negated.6) No extension of argment character space or via gratuitous formatting liberties, except if mutually agreed upon.7) This is a philosophical debate, and first principles must be mutually accepted if used as a basis of argument. Argument from authority, argument from tradition, and the naturalistic fallacy are all accepted as fallacies by CON.8) Shared participation is encouraged; while there can only be one formal "PRO" and one formal "CON", any independently supported argument may be advanced and picked up by the formal debators.9) First principles accepted in this debate must include that: "The universe exists"; "knowledge exists"; "all descriptive models have greater value than any non-descriptive model"; and that "equals OUGHT be treated equally".