You know Britian that country America has never been idependent from.

only ASSHOLES try to gain politically off the dead bodies of people is these tragedies.

...telling people who are trained to use them, what tools they're allowed to use to defend their lives?

I'm not a mechanic. Should I tell my mechanic what tools to use when he's fixing my car?

I'm not a doctor. Should I tell a doctor what tools and procedures he should use to save a life?

Any gun can be used offensively or defensively. Limiting what tools can be used, limits one's ability to defend themselves. One gun is not suitable for all purposes. A Taurus Judge is a good weapon to defend yourself from a rattlesnake. A Glock is a good weapon to defend yourself from a mugger. An AR-15 is a good weapon to defend yourself in a home invasion from many intruders.

If you don't understand how to protect yourself, don't tell others who have that training, what to do to keep themselves alive.

Because you clearly do not know much about firearms. I’ll let your misuse of clips for rounds slide but anyone with a smattering of firearm knowledge knows that an AR-15 is not an automatic weapon and thus has nowhere near an 800 rounds per minute capability. Secondly, they also know that shotguns not rifles (AR-15 or otherwise) are used for pheasant hunting.

Initially it seemed most plausible that your present situation was best explained by the loss of your license to practice medicine but it could be almost as plausible that you never made it all the way through med school, which would give you more than one thing in common with James Holmes.

"Why do civilians need any automatic rifle?"

If you are attempting to obliquely insinuate that 12 deaths and 71 wounded because of the recent shootings in Aurora, Colorado were caused by an "automatic rifle," you can now relax.  I wasn't there, and you probably weren't either but I'm pretty sure that Holmes was firing a SEMI-automatic rifle.  Just to bring your vocabulary up to standard, the exact distinction can be nicely made using the "semi-automatic," or the "fully automatic" nomenclature.  I'm sure you know the difference.

May I take the liberty of re-wording your question in the light of this new vocabulary?  I think you intended to ask, "Why do civilians need any semi-automatic rifle?"

Let's start there.  May we just breeze on past the whole argument of "those weapons aren't suitable for either target-shooting or hunting?"  They are actually very well suited for both of those applications, as well as self-defence.  Let's say you work in some remote part of a cattle ranch in Texas, and not in some air-conditioned ward at Grady Hospital.  In that situation, rifles of this kind work nicely as a necessary tool against suffering the effects of snakes, wolves or coyotes harrassing your livestock-or your person.  Thanks to the leadership our current and previous two presidents have shown regarding immigration control, some parts of South Texas (and Arizona, New Mexico and California) are now quite dangerous, given the fact that illegal Mexican lettuce pickers and armed cartel members frequently use such removes as their private highway system.  Better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it-y'know?

Article 2 of the American Bill of Rights states:

“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.”  Some other quotes of the same vintage to bear in mind include:
    "The right to bear arms is liberty’s teeth.” ------George Washington
    “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”-------Thomas Jefferson
    “Never trust a government that doesn’t trust its own citizens with guns.”---Benjamin Franklin

I don't think the framers of the Constitution had either target-shooting or hunting in mind when they wrote the 2nd amendment. During the 20th Century, as a result of gun control, 56 million disarmed people were rounded-up and slaughtered by their governments.  This video explains the results of the impulse of totalitarian governments to disarm their citizenry:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ln56Zp22res

Subsequent to the Aurora shootings, we are again being subjected to the exhortations of ghouls on both sides of the aisle making grist for their political agendas from the trajedy asking, "why do people need guns?"  A more central question needs to be asked, why were there so few mass shootings just two decades ago compared to now?  Has the supply of firearms increased dramatically during that time?  No.  Have the culture vultures in Hollywood and the "entertainment industry" been pumping-out more and more sewage that depicts violence as a fun, lurid adventure?  Yes.

But, that is only part of the root cause.

Working hand-in-hand with Hollywood, and with the widespread worship of a culture of the ultra-violence it has created, we also have the pharmaceutical industry and the cadre of handmaidens doing their bidding in the "health care industry" who now hand-out antidepressant medication of the SSRI variety (serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors) like prizes in boxes of Cracker Jacks.   The frequency of times this class of drugs has been involved in such incidents has gone way past the point of being merely "statistically significant," and should be blamed as a, if not "the" causative factor.  This pdf presents list of the connections of these drugs in 244 homicidal events:

http://www.whale.to/a/homicidesSSRISandADHDmedications.pdf

We can expect a prolonged and concerted attack on the right to own firearms and the Second Amendment in response to the shooting in Colorado.  The advocates of citizen disarmament will make the argument that this will prevent such mass shootings in the future.  Here’s something they will not tell you: the statistical chance you will be a victim of a mass shooting is miniscule.  

Ronald Bailey, writing for Reason.com, cites some statistics on gun violence from Department of Justice statistics:

   "The proportion of homicide incidents involving two victims has increased slightly from 2.7% in 1980 to 3.7% in 2008.

   Homicide incidents involving three or more victims have also increased during this same period, but have remained less than 1% of all homicides each year.

Multiple victim homicides are so small as to be almost insignificant:

   - 3.7% involved two victims

   - 0.5% involved three victims

   - 0.2% involved four victims

   - 0.1% involved five or more victims.

Moreover, the homicide rate in the United States has declined sharply in recent years – from 9.3 homicides per 100,000 in 1992 to 4.8 homicides per 100,000 in 2010."

But none of these numbers will stem the jabber of hysterical gun grabbers who will use this latest trajedy in order to insist on disarming American citizens because Little Timmy and Sweet Heather are in constant danger of being shot by a lone gun-nut everytime they leave the safety of their own houses.

Take the shooter out of the theater and the gun out of his hand and replace him with Chuck Norris and a box cutter.  Since he's Chuck Norris there would be no wounded just 83 dead people.  No one would be talking about why do civilians need box cutters, no one would be trying to ban them.  They'd be wondering why no one noticed Chuck Norris was crazy.  A box cutter in the right hands is just a lethal as a gun.  They are both just as inanimate.  People give them their power, power to do good, power to do evil.