Few of us are. This is more about rights than about guns.
What do they classify as 'assault weapons'
THERE'S the first problem. At the moment, what they classify as an "assault weapon" ranges widely, from a totally legal rifle with a tiny bolt on the end to hold a bayonet (like the military does), to (get this) two tiny metal L-shaped pieces (called "sears") that can be added to a rifle (by a gunsmith or someone with more knowledge than I) to make it fully automatic (YES, you read that right, the two pieces of metal, weighing less than a few ounces, qualifies as an assault rifle), from fully legal rifles with flash suppressors added (those make the flame leaping out of the end of the gun spread out and less intense), to accessories that make the gun look like an automatic rifle (this is basically how it is described in CA law).
The elephant sitting in the living room on this issue is that these gun-hating morons also leave the door open to revise what qualifies as an "assault rifle" at their discretion (read: whim) at any time. You may invest $2000 in a beautiful new piece, and tomorrow, you must turn it in because owning it makes you a felon (complete with the loss of your right to vote). Ready to play THAT fun little game? And exactly where does this do justice for anyone, protect anyone, or make anyone freer?
and what would the average guy need these for?
DO NOT FALL FOR THEIR STUPID QUESTIONS!!!! Nobody EVER asks what we need our other rights for. Don't dare EVER let someone ask you this questioin about the 2nd Amendment.
Here's the answer, though, in case you find a sincere person such as yourself asking: The Founders knew how important it was that the citizenry be able to, at ANY time, defeat ANY army that threatened them, either foreign or domestic (actually, we wrote and rewrote rules against standing armies back then, but we eventually decided that having a military was too important). The ONLY way to guarantee that a bunch of untrained farmers could beat a world-class army (like they did to the Redcoats) is for those farmers to have the same basic weapon that the footsoldier of the world-class army. Today, that is the "assault rifle" (AR-15, M-16, MP5, etc). With both sides evenly matched in basic firepower, our lack of experience and training is compensated by our huge numerical advantage (45 million hunters againt China's 3 million soldiers? Fuhgeddaboudit!), and the fact that our troops will never be massed in one location (think guerilla tactics and VietNam... world-class armies CAN be fought by untrained farmers!).
If we don't have similar weaponry, and are limited to 5-shot capacity .22 caliber handguns in confronting brigades of armored soldiers with 300 round assault rifles, we don't stand much of a chance, numerical advantage be darned.
Hope that helps!
Our Founding Fathers gifted us with a system of self-governance which has no place for armaments as a means to settle political disputes. There is no place in the modern day and age, either, for anyone to advocate the violent overthrow of our government as long as we have the freedom to cast ballots and collectively decide our own destiny.
Anyone unable to cope with this reality will just have to learn to lump it.