A quick thought:

Throughout history, nations have adopted a frontline weapon for it's military which was never really copied in any large numbers for private use. Then came the Colt 1911 pistol and the AR platform weapons. The two most highly copied and imitated designs in the world. By current estimates there are more than 3 million AR type weapons in the hands of private citizens in the U.S.A. today. These weapons are being used for sporting purposes. Long story short, the AR-10 rifle was first developed in 1954 by Eugene Stoner as a civilian weapon but hoping for military contracts. By 1956 the Air Force is looking for a survival rifle for it's air crews so Stoner develops the AR-5, a take-down rifle chambered in .22rf. The AR-7 civilian version is soon released to the market. The military version, the AR-5 lies dormant. AR rifles by 1961 are now licensed out to Colt with Stoner (Armalite Corp.) as consultants. The U.S. Air Force wants a light semi-auto chambered in the new 5.56 NATO round and so Stoner/Colt come up with the AR-15 which is soon adopted in 1963. They purchased 8500 guns. Keep in mind that this rifle accepted by the Air Force is the same AR-15 semi-auto in the hands of civilians today. The Air Force now designates it the M-16. (Still in semi-auto form). The U.S. Army the same year orders 85,000 of them but with some alterations such as the now familiar forward assist (deemed unnecessary by the Air Force trials but approved anyway) and capable of select fire. The 3 round burst came up during the Vietnam war as a way to cut down on what the Quartermaster division called "wasteful expenditure" of ammo. The same guys who had never served in a front line experience so had no clue that sometimes it IS necessary to empty the magazine at the enemy charging in large numbers.  

Now let's think about this: There are approximately 1.4 million active frontline personnel in the armed forces. If we figure that there was one AR type weapon for each of those personnel, which is a very high estimate since a large percentage of these service personnel are office workers, clerks, truck drivers, hospital workers, etc, etc who are never issued a weapon of any kind, and factor in that assault weapons account for about 76% of a nation's small arms inventory, that would mean that the U.S. armed forces have fewer than 1 million AR type weapons. One can then conclude that private citizens in the U.S. own over three times more AR type weapons than the U.S. government. Also the military versions are full auto or 3 round burst configurations whereas the civilian models are only semi-auto.

Therefore I propose that we, the private citizens, by shear numbers, do not own military assault weapons as defined by the government, instead the United States government is using a modified sporting rifle as it's frontline weapon.

Numbers don't lie, unlike our government. Think about that for awhile and spread the word.