Just on the topic of arguing against assault weapons bans, I've had some luck educating people about the development of assault rifles. More often than not, people get it. And, it raises the obvious question, why are the anti-gunners lying. Essentially, the education step discredits the anti-gunners.
For any unfamiliar, the information goes something like this.
Start around 1898 to 1903. Two very important military rifles were invented. The German K98 and the Springfield 1903 which was just a little later rechambered for the .30-06 cartridge.
At that time, rifles like that were considered to need power and a comparatively heavy bullet to travel long distances on a European battlefield--say 300 to 900 yards--and still kill or badly wound. Such rifles were called battle rifles.
Being bolt-action they were a little slow to operate. And, they used cartridges that were large enough that only a certain small quantity could be carried in the gun before needing to reload.
In this era, there were also automatic weapons. Fully automatic weapons that fired battle rifle cartridges were called machine guns and were large and cumbersome enough to need a crew of two or three men. Hand-held automatic weapons are called sub-machine guns. They use pistol ammunition. For example, the American Tommy gun and the American grease gun used the pistol cartridges for the .45 semi-automatic pistol. The German submachine guns did the same with 9mm. Using relatively low powered pistol cartridges, submachine guns were only useful for close fighting.
During WWII, German engineers realized it would be handy to have an infantry weapon that was more powerful than a pistol cartridge, but could also shoot full auto. Thus the first assault rifle was born, the Sturmgeweher. The new German assault rifle used an intermediate cartridge having more power than a pistol--to get the bullet out to distance if needed, but less powerful than a battle rifle so the gun didn't have to be the size of a full-sized machine gun.
Also, the word assault designates a particular phase of a military operation. It is that last phase where everyone stands up and moves the final yards towards the enemy, and then through the objective to the other side of the objective, cleaning out the enemy. This is where the name for this type of rifle almost certainly comes from. You can use a battle rifle at distances well removed from an assault, whereas an assault rifle is more effective at assault distances, can be fired full-auto during an assault, and since they are using smaller cartridges, can carry more in the gun before reloading, which is handy during an assault compared to a battle rifle that only holds 6 rounds in the rifle which would, force infantry to resort to the bayonet sooner during an assualt.
So, assault rifles are better classed as carbines. They are definitely not high-powered rifles by an means. The old battle rifle cartridges were more powerful, and even the .30-06 is considered an mid-power cartridge in the full scheme of rifle cartridge power. The pistol-grip helps its use as a submachine gun. Meaning, an assault rifle by definition is capable of fully automatic fire. And, there are very few of those in civilian hands in the US. So, these "assault weapons" being discussed today are not nearly as powerful as made out, and are, except for a very few that are already strictly regulated, not even capable of fully automatic fire.
Usually, by the time you explain all that, you can see light bulbs coming on in listeners minds.
