If by “covered it” you mean you gave your opinion it probably is in your essays above somewhere.
An assault rifle is the term commonly used for rifles that can be switched to automatic fire ... i.e. squeeze the trigger and spray bullets. In my view that’s not a requirement in any leisure activity or sport. You may have a different view but I’m not going to be persuaded.
None of the rifles sold as semiautomatics in the US have a switch to just go to automatic fire.
In order for something like that to occur, you have to take the gun apart, modify the trigger sear and then put it back together. That's highly highly illegal and will result in felony jail time.
All of the semiautomatic rifles in the US that aren't owned by someone class III (gun dealers and the few enthusiasts who would subject their living premises to unannounced ATF audits) are one trigger pull, one bullet. Some have manual actions then to cycle and some don't. My point about the bump stock (which is probably an unknown thing there) was that it was a device made to cause the gun recoil to force your finger into the trigger repeatedly, functionally making the gun automatic. While I guess you could call me an advocate for reasonable firearms ownership even though I don't own any at this point, I had my spats with folks who said "the ATF says it's not Class III", in that "ok, it doesn't meet the ATF letter of the law definition so they're ignoring logic". Obama couldn't make a dent in it, or lost the will to try. Trump had it moved to class III. The contingent likes trump so much that the complaining was relatively mild.
This is one of the reasons that I don't like politics - the outcome is the same, why does it matter what letter is next to the name of the person doing it?
My point to you (being in the UK, this stuff may be somewhat foreign, the idea of trigger sears and parts completely different between the two guns, and *highly* regulated) is that a browning BLR or some other euro semi automatics are similar to the black plastic guns in function. They just look sporting. There are variants of both used to hunt here in the states. It's not allowed in my state - you have to cycle the action here by law, manually, but it's allowed in other states, and then yet some others, you can hunt with a shotgun slug but not a rifle (shotgun slugs look scary, but they come out of the air at an exceptionally short distance. At close range, they're extremely effective for hunting).
Don't worry, the media often has trouble understanding the difference between semi-auto and auto, too, and they quite often refer to semi-automatic US-manufactured semi-autos as "AK-47s" (a fully automatic soviet design).
Also, my point was that you are allowed to have a firearm for defense in the US if you'd like and you're legally eligible. You can lose that right by being irresponsible. The statement was made by several on here that it was a want (as in, collectibles or leisure) so I went with that in terms of someone saying that everyone was buying machines whose only purpose was to kill. But it's hard to make the case for that when most are just shot at paper.