What is an assault weapon?

[metalbot]

36. The rate is actually an important aspect of self defense

There are two reasons for this:
1. Unlike in the movies, when you shoot someone, they don't generally just fall over and die. If they have a gun in their hands, and you shoot them, they are going to shoot at you unless you hit a critical CNS area, or you cause a massive, rapid drop in blood pressure.
2. Shooting under pressure is really, really hard. I've done a lot of competition shooting, and just the stress of competition drops my accuracy. Add to that the adrenaline of a real life self defense situation (I wake up and my daughter is screaming because there is someone in the house), and my ability to place a round in exactly one of the critical areas in (1) goes way down.

A much better case can be made for limiting the number of rounds that can come out.

We do at some level already restrict the fire rate - automatic weapons are limited to law enforcement and military (and a few other scenarios involving ATF tax stamps).