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Why does everyone in the US have guns and [assault] rifles?We don't.Current survey based estimates are that 28% of U.S. residents, about 40% of households, own guns. That is by no means “everyone", and it's part of the problem. The country is roughly divided in thirds; those who own guns, those who don't own any but have fired one and are familiar with them, and those with no history or intention of owning or firing guns. Gun owners and those with no experience with them tend to be the sources of most of the extreme viewpoints in the debate, with most in the middle wondering what all the fuss is about.As for assault rifles, that has a specific definition dating back to the military's coining of the term, and that definition requires that the rifle be capable of automatic fire, making it a “machine gun" under the National Firearms Act. There are 175,000 weapons registered as “machine guns" under the NFA, and unless the 1986 Hughes Amendment is repealed that number will only decrease as the weapons wear out or break. No new automatic firearm can be registered in the U.S., so the only people allowed to have them are law enforcement, a very small number of specialized security contractors (the kinds of security you'd have around nuclear power plants, defense contractor assembly facilities etc.), and people with a “Class 3” FFL/SOT combination in the business of selling weapons to these groups.What civilians own are semi-automatic rifles which bear cosmetic similarity to a fully-automatic design. These are commonly called “military-style rifles" or “assault weapons", especially by the people who want them banned. They were banned, for 10 years in the 90s and early 2000s, largely in response to the Stockton school shooting in 1989. That ban did not prevent Columbine, nor the North Hollywood Shootout or the D.C. Sniper attacks, all widely publicized, which resulted in the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban “sunsetting" in 2004. There have been several attempts to renew and expand it, notably in 2005, 2013, 2017 and 2018, none of which have had enough support even in Democrat-controlled Congresses to become law.Anyway, how many people own one of those weapons? Depends on what definition of “assault weapon” you subscribe to. The original AWB used what is now known as a “two-feature rule"; if the rifle was semi-automatic, with a detachable magazine, and has two of a list of other features including a pistol grip or thumbhole stock, a collapsible stock, a threaded muzzle, an integral muzzle brake, flash hider or compensating ports, a barrel shroud, a bayonet lug or - honest to God — an attached grenade launcher, it qualified.By most estimates, there are about 28 million weapons that meet this definition in civilian hands, and about 25% of gun owners, about 16 million, own at least one.Later attempts at an AWB, as well as several state laws mimicking the Federal one, use a “one-feature rule", which encompasses a much larger group of weapons including ones the original AWB's authors specifically did not want to include for a variety of reasons. The definition can also include “any semi-automatic version of a fully-automatic weapon", and the newest drafted versions include any weapon with a feature “designed to increase the rate of fire of a semi-automatic weapon", language borrowed from the ill-fated bump stock ban that was broadened to such an extent that it applies to any semi-automatic firearm with any attention paid whatsoever to the weight, travel and “feel" of the trigger. This would constitute the bulk of civilian owned firearms with trigger pulls any lighter than mandated by certain police departments like the NYPD (12 pounds; that's a lot of weight on one finger).So to reiterate the short answer:We don't all own guns, much less assault rifles.Now, that doesn’t really answer the implied question of why there are so many civilian-owned guns in the U.S.. 85 million gun owners is a lot, more per-capita than most of the advanced economies of the world, especially when you don’t consider the countries where a lot of people have their guns as a result of military service, like in Israel, Switzerland and others. So, because I was A2A, I’ll be generous, and assume the question was something along the lines of “Why is gun ownership so common in the United States?”The answer starts with twenty-seven words added to our foundational document just a couple of years after that document was first ratified by the fledgling United States, more or less with the condition that these words (and others) be added:A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.This sentence is practically unique among the constitutions and foundational laws of the world. The Czech Republic is considering an equivalent RKBA amendment to their own constitution, Mexico has language like this in its constitution that is totally ignored, and other than that I am not aware of any government on the planet that is limited in this way regarding the ability to control weapons among its residents.The history, language and interpretation of the Second Amendment is its own book of an answer, likely several books even, and so not really in the scope of an answer in a format like this. The above serves as a concise answer to “why can we”, which is a necessary precursor to “why do we”. Without the Second Amendment, it’s very likely the United States would look much like the UK or France, where firearms are tolerated to the extent that they are used in hunting or sport shooting as a matter of tradition, and the firearms and the people who own them very tightly controlled to the point that owning even one is a status symbol. The 2A, if nothing else, has served as a caution to legislators proposing various measures to control crime and violence; while the right can, in the opinion of the Supreme Court, be restricted, there is a line separating restriction from infringement which may not be crossed.So, ”why do we”? Again, the most concise answer is that there are a large number of logical reasons to own a firearm, and many gun owners consider more than one such reason when purchasing firearms (so the percentages I mention will add up to more than 100%).Personal Protection - 60% of respondents to a Gallup poll who indicated they owned firearms gave some variant of this as a primary reason they do so. This is in stark contrast with many gun control advocates’ offers of “compromise”, in which they point out that the measure excludes designs traditionally used for hunting or sport shooting. This is an extremely common view of the use of firearms outside the U.S. as well. However, opinions among gun owners themselves are much less focused on the firearm as a “big boy toy”, and much more focused on the use of a firearm against threats to life and safety. As such, most gun owners aren’t placated by statements that “we’re not after your hunting rifles”, because those gun owners aren’t worried about that in the first place.But personal protection is what the police are for, right? Well, not according to the U.S. court system. Case law dating back to the turn of the last century makes it abundantly clear that the police are not any one person’s bodyguard, and have no legal liability for any failure to protect one person, or a specified group or even an entire demographic, from physical harm or loss. Their duty is to “the public” in the abstract, and they carry out that duty by investigating crime and apprehending suspects. The weapons they carry are for their protection, not yours. There have been dozens of court cases on the topic of when, if ever, a police officer’s inaction, incompetence or negligence constitutes a dereliction of duty and attaches a liability. So far, the legal consensus is a four-part test: (1) a law enforcement agency must, by words or actions, expressly or very obviously implicitly agree to an “affirmative duty to protect” you or a group of people including you; (2) that LEA’s agents must be aware of a substantial risk of harm to you from their inaction; (3) you must have had some form of direct contact with an agent of the LEA, and (4) you reasonably relied on the protection of the LEA. All this, on top of the proof of resulting injury, are the burden of you or your estate to prove in civil court; fail to prove any of these points by a preponderance of the evidence and your claim will be dismissed. Finally, there’s a very basic point I glossed over; you were robbed, hurt and/or killed. The courts are a means for reparations; even if you win, it means you lost first.So, if the police don’t have a duty to protect you, who does? The answer is simple; you do. To that end, the 2A provides the means by which people may access the most effective tool yet devised for that purpose; firearms. Handguns and semi-automatic rifles are the most common types of firearm typically sold for personal protection; shotguns are also commonly recommended from time to time, but are usually “too much gun” and pose a risk to bystanders around and behind an assailant.Hunting - Next to personal protection, the use of firearms for hunting was a relatively poor second place at 36% of survey respondents giving it as a reason they own firearms. However, it’s still common, to the tune of 36 million hunting licenses active nationwide in 2017. People hunt different things; the two most well-known classes are four-legged antler-bearing animals, ranging from deer up through elk and moose, and the winged variety, from doves and pigeons to waterfowl like ducks and geese. Different firearms are needed for these two classes (typically rifles for deer/elk/moose, shotguns for fowl), and for rifles, the energy of the bullet needs to fall in a narrower range based on the game animal’s basic weight class; a .338 Win Mag will destroy a mule deer at anything approaching typical civilian hunting distances, while a .243 Win isn’t enough bullet to ethically kill a larger animal like a moose unless you get just the right shot.This doesn’t count a large number of jurisdictions and animals not considered “game”, but instead “nuisance pests”. In the UK and even continental Europe, predators and aggressive animals have been well-controlled for centuries, but there are still parts of the U.S. that are effectively wild given the number of humans per square mile. Animals like feral pigs, coypu/nutria, opossum, coyote, wolf, lynx/bobcat, mountain lion/cougar and similar are viewed in a variety of exurban and rural communities as having little value for food or sport, and the purpose of shooting them is to exterminate the animal from the area to mitigate threats to crops, livestock or even people (some of these are territorial and will attack encroaching humans). Even the common ground squirrel, viewed as cute and cuddly, is a pretty damaging pest, driving away songbirds from bird feeders and stealing food meant for pets or other domesticated animals. While there is some conservation mentality surrounding more native species like wolves, ‘yotes and lions, feral pigs and coypu are considered invasive species and typically have “shoot on sight” status among rural landowners. Most states do not have designated seasons in which these animals may legally be hunted, and many states don’t even require a hunting license to hunt these for pest control, especially on your own land or with the landowner’s permission. Even many incorporated areas that ban the discharge of firearms as a noise nuisance and safety hazard often make an exception for the use of a firearm for pest control. This kind of hunting is commonly called “small game hunting” or “varminting”, though the “varmints” can weigh several hundred pounds and pose a threat to the hunter themselves in some cases.Sport/target shooting - Including non-specific “recreational use” (which undoubtedly also includes some hunting), this was given as a reason by about 20% of gun owners. While virtually all gun owners engage in target practice both to hone skills and to tune equipment (zeroing scopes, testing hand-loaded cartridges), most view it as a means to an end, even if it accounts for the majority of rounds fired. Others, however, regard shooting at nonliving things as its own separate pastime, ranging from informal “plinking” at improvised targets to more formal range shooting including stationary paper targets, sporting clays and more specialized moving or time-sensitive target setups, including “practical shooting” competitions in a variety of formats from “gallery shooting” or “race-gunning” at an array of hinged steel targets, to simulations of room-clearing and other combat or law-enforcement scenarios.Collecting/heirloom ownership/tradition - Quite a few people who don’t shoot guns recreationally still own one or two, often passed down through the family from a time when firearms were viewed as a more practical tool of a landowner. About 10% of gun owners mentioned some variation of having weapons for sentimental, traditional, historical or collection/hobby reasons. Many of these fired their last shot decades ago, but some are still functional and a few are taken out from time to time to fire a couple shots for old time’s sake. True collectors (about 1% of gun owners mentioned this specifically) regard these types of pieces as more than just practical or sentimental; they have historical value, and the rarity of working examples makes them not only collectible but an investment in themselves.These are the four biggest general reasons Americans own guns; compared to these, most others catalogued by Gallup (from whose polls I got the numbers) were distant minorities. That includes the reason, “because it’s my right as a ‘Murican” (just 5% mentioned anything to do with rights or the 2A), as well as using guns in their employment (3%), as a tool to euthanize animals (1%), or just because they like using them (5%).Hopefully, that’s enough reasons. Theoretically, all we need to say is “it’s my right”, but there are plenty of reasons not dependent on twenty-seven words in a 225-year-old document.