What an Assault Weapon Is. One of the reasons a ban on assault weapons is politically popular is that the public has been misled about what is being proposed. Yet there is no functional difference between assault weapons and any other semiautomatics, including those used for hunting and target shooting. Proponents of bans on assault weapons say they want to target weapons that are only useful for shooting a person and have no practical value in hunting. This may be a distinction not worth making, however.
Any firearm can kill people.
But the ones that would be banned under current proposals are not the ones that are used most frequently in murders. Restrictions on Machine Guns . Since 1934 civilians have been required to obtain a special license from the U.S. Department of Treasury in order to possess automatic-fire weapons, and since 1986 importation or manufacture of these weapons for private use has been prohibited. The Russian AK-47, a true assault rifle, falls under these restrictions. Over the past 50 years, no civilian has ever used a legally owned machine gun in a violent crime.