Nebojsa Malic sends an interesting message regarding assault weapons:

The term “assault rifle” is simply a translation of the German word Sturmgewehr, which was used to describe an automatic weapon that used rifle rounds (as opposed to “submachine gun” which used pistol rounds, i.e. Tommy gun, the Russian PPSh, or the German MP40). Towards the end of the war, German troops used these “assault rifles” to great effect against single-shot Allied rifles, but they were too few to make a difference in the outcome of the war (for which I am profoundly grateful). A captured Sturmgewehr served as inspiration for one Russian tanker to design an automatic rifle of his own. He named it Avtomat Kalashnikova, production year 1947 – the AK-47 “assault rifle”, with the uncanny outside resemblance to the Sturmgewehr.