"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun."
- Patrick Henry

"Militias, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves and include all men capable of bearing arms."
- Trench Coxe

"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
- George Mason

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
- Richard Henry Lee

"Those who hammer their guns into plowshares will plow for those who do not."
- Thomas Jefferson

"The best we can help for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."
- Alexander Hamilton

"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."
- Thomas Jefferson

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined or determined to commit crimes. Such laws only make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assassins; they serve to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
-Thomas Jefferson

"Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the people's liberty teeth and keystone... the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable... more than
99% of them by their silence indicate that they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference. When firearms go, all goes,we need them every hour."
- George Washington

An assault rifle is a selective fire rifle or carbine firing ammunition with muzzle energies intermediate between those typical of pistol and high-powered rifle ammunition. Assault rifles are the standard small arms in most modern armies, having largely replaced or supplemented larger, more powerful battle rifles, such as the World War II-era M1 Garand and SVT-40. Examples of assault rifles include the AK-47, the M16 rifle, and the Steyr AUG.

Semi-automatic rifles, though confusingly classified in the USA as assault weapons by the now defunct 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, are not assault rifles as they are not selective fire. Belt-fed weapons or rifles with fixed magazines also do not meet the definition of an assault rifle.