An assault weapon is meant to inflict maximum damage in a short amount of time... In short, it is a killing machine to be used on the battlefield. They aren't good to hunt with nor are they necessary for self protection. These machines are made to kill a lot of people as quickly as possible.

The problem with your argument on "here are diseases that kill people" is that these deaths were likely caused by the individual's lifestyle or the circumstances were completely out of their control. Nobody's right to live was being taken away by another.

But you do make a good point about other weapons used to kill others... However assault weapons make this process so easy. I have heard the phrase, "if someone wants to kill someone, they will find a way" used in connection to this topic. This is true. Likewise, if someone wants to break into my house, they will find a way. But I'm not going to hand the person a baseball bat or keys to my house to make that process any easier for them.

To be honest, the whole argument about it being "a small fraction" of deaths is a bit disturbing. If one of those killed with an assault rifle was your parent/grandparent/sibling/child/friend or any other loved one, you would not shrug it off because it was "just one life" because when it's your loved one, that one life DOES matter. To say that Sandy Hook took the lives of "just" 20 kindergarteners is a pretty hideous thing to say. Sometimes, numbers do not paint a full picture.

Assault rifles have been used in many recent mass murders. It is no secret that since the assault weapons ban was lifted, the number has increased dramatically. Would all of our problems be solved with a ban on assault weapons? No. Could it be costly? Maybe. But looking at recent tragedies, these weapons continue to fall into the wrong hands time after time. We need to start somewhere and this is a pretty obvious place to start. Opponents to this argument will counter with "we should treat mental illness instead" without taking into account the time (months to years) and cost (extraordinarily high-which would likely be paid for by taxpayers because many sufferers cannot afford treatment) nor do they consider the fact that not all people can be successfully treated.

We live in a time where people are scared to go to crowded places and parents are scared to send their children to school. We need to start taking care of this problem and a ban on assault weapons seems like the obvious place to start.