Depends on the war. As I understand matters from the perspective of a civilian who reads a lot of history, the purpose of an assault rifle is to combine at leas

Depends on the war. As I understand matters from the perspective of a civilian who reads a lot of history, the purpose of an assault rifle is to combine at least decent accuracy at medium to long range, so that on a battlefield you can shoot the fellow who's trying to shoot you while he's still a couple hundred meters thataway, with the sort of concentrated firepower previously only available from a machine gun proper, so that you can clear rooms in house-to-house fighting and otherwise deal with close-in situations which call for more firepower than a semi-automatic battle rifle can provide.