In light of recent events lets take a moment for some humor

And that cousin probably has mental issues

Well that kind of goes without saying. Nobody wakes up in the morning deciding to go murder a bunch of people without something having derailed at some point in their head. Extreme paranoid racism, psychologically-spurred violence, and violent fundamentalism of all brands are all the result of something going wrong somewhere. But that doesn't change the fact that we tend to say "yay guns, 2nd Amendment" when we see a white person with an assault weapon but "oh no, shoot them all first before they kill someone" when we see somebody who looks even slightly darker with an assault weapon. There are an awful lot of scary white groups tromping around toting guns lately, but we ignore that their manifestos make them technically domestic terrorists. Everyone in America should own a personal firearm in my opinion, but nobody NEEDS an assault rifle.

I'm not sure what part of America you're from, but the majority of the people where I live only care about if you are mentally stable or not. Very few people care about skin color when it comes to these issues (racists), and we usually don't listen to these people because we're better than that. Is everyone stereotypical? Yes, to a degree. But not everyone to the point that we "want to kill them all first before they kill someone" because their skin color is a little darker than ours.
For the white groups toting around guns, I'd be scared out of my mind. I don't care if you're white, blue, purple, or orange if you go around shouting "2nd amendment" while raising your rifle in the air I am automatically going to assume you are full of yourself and/or bat-shit crazy.

And lastly. You're right. No one NEEDS an assault rifle, but they're pretty fun to use (at the range of course). Should we ban them? No, not at all. Should we regulate them? Most definitely. Outside of the military/law enforcement an assault rifle is downright unnecessary, so it should be limited to recreational use.

My example was in reference to pictures like this one. I get images on my Facebook feed that look like the blond girl all the time, things captioned "daddy's little shooter" or "look what I got for Christmas" or similar things. The majority of mass shooting deaths resulted from white, native-born shooters, no matter what the reason for the violence was, but stereotypical "Murica" images are considered fine. Meanwhile, I've yet to hear of anybody on my news or in my newspaper denouncing all the anti-Islam marches that happened yesterday, put together by--and I mean this literally, because this was what they were doing--white people waving guns and yelling about the 2nd Amendment, telling American citizens of Islamic faith that they weren't welcome. Not a word on this, but if somebody slaps up a picture of somebody who looks like the Middle Eastern girl, whether it be a Syrian rebel, an Israeli soldier, or an Afghan police officer, the immediate majority reaction is "terrorist"

commentary. Let's face it, a lot of people on this site are educated and somewhat open-minded, the loudest of the Americans out there in the world being heard are not. So there is this idea that floats around in places you may not frequent, that if whoever has the gun isn't fair-skinned then they're a violent foreigner here to cause harm. As for the assault rifles, they don't need to be banned, but they should be regulated. They're not something just anybody should be able to buy and have just because they thought it was cool. I agree with the car argument. "Drunk drivers kill people, should we ban cars?" No...but let's do the same thing. If you have something that can kill that many people, you should have a license for it, you should re-register it annually, you should insure it, and you should have to get it inspected every two years just so we know that yes, the person who is allowed to have it is still the person who has it. Personal firearm=Right. Assault rifle=privilege.