do some folks still think of a good , fast handling lever gun as a cowboy assault rifle?
People that use lever guns a lot , tend to be pretty good with them. My two granddads could empty a Winchester. or Marlin lickity split. And they could hit what they shot at, doing that. But to them , their lever guns were working guns, as old time town marshalls in Oklahoma during the oil boom of the 1920s and 1930s
More folks than just cowboys have used lever-action rifles. I have seen “Appalachian” used in place of “cowboy.” Whether that is meant to refer to a specific group of people, perhaps in a negative way, or to mean that the cartridges typically chambered in lever-action repeaters are useful at the short ranges usually encountered in forested, hilly terrain, a lever rifle is more at home in Eastern woods than on Western prairies, plains, badlands, and deserts, so, Appalachian makes sense.
Other gun writers’ regional references I have seen, regarding urban defensive lever actions, in modern times, include Brooklyn and Kansas City.
Any functional firearm can be used to commit the legally-defined offense of some level of assault. Some jurisdictions, if not most, will include non-functional and replica firearms in the legal definitions of assault. Then, there is the military concept of assault. Personally, I do not go about assaulting anyone, in either context. If I am walking-about with one of my Browning BLR rifles, or otherwise have one handy, at the moment in time, it could certain act in the defensive role, to the limits of my ability to get a sight picture, and the ability of .308 Winchester to cause adequate terminal performance. My BLR magazines only hold four cartridges of .308, but I can change mags more quickly than I can shove one cartridge through the loading gate of a traditional lever rifle. My wife’s family’s Winchester 94, .30 WCF, is our household’s shared general utility rifle, with defense falling within the utility role.
The Russians did learn a bitter lesson, at Plevna, a.k.a. Pleven, when they faced well-trained Turks, who had been issued Winchester lever-action repeaters, in addition to their standard infantry rifles. In the context of that one part of the overall siege/battle, the Winchester lever-action repeaters certainly performed well in the defense of a position.