I think this 'story' is bunk -- everything I ever heard, Mr. K had no regrets at all, blaming the guns misuse on politicians. Which is the correct perspective, imho.
Fair enough for me.
His design killed millions, mostly by socialist governments against their own citizens.
It wasn’t his gun’s fault, it was his communist government’s.
It’s the driver, not the car.
I think this 'story' is bunk -- everything I ever heard, Mr. K had no regrets at all, blaming the guns misuse on politicians. Which is the correct perspective, imho.
Governments turn most inventions/discoveries to bad, ask Oppenheimer.
I believe Chekhov wrote a humorous short story about a despondent young man, a mechanical engineer, who had been unlucky and was contemplating suicide by throwing himself into a river.
Being a potential suicide, the devil was keeping watch to see if he could gather his soul, but in casually reading his mind, the devil discovered the potential for the young man to invent a formidable weapon, a fully automatic pistol.
Contemplating the potential of such a weapon to promulgate evil in war and peace, suddenly the devil realized that the young man was about to kill himself, and his invention might be lost for a generation or two. So the devil had to intercede to save the young man’s life.
The rest of the story is of the devil in the unusual position of trying to convince the determined young man of the beauty of the world and the value of living.
Guns do not kill people... people kill people... ANYTHING ELSE IS A COMMUNIST LIE!
How many have been killed by rocks, or sticks? Who manufactured those?
This isn’t exactly a huge deal. Of course a man near the end of his life is going to be looking back and scrutinizing his actions. Of course a man who is dying will have regrets. Would all of the people killed with AK-47s and AK-variants have been killed if Kalashnikov hadn’t invented the AK-47? Maybe; there were other guns available, and one of them would have filled the void. But on the other hand, his design was quite revolutionary and made the gun more durable, so perhaps if there were no AK-47 less of those people would have died. That this would be running through a dying man’s mind near the end isn’t exactly shocking. It’s also not exactly worthy of so much publicity.
Ultimately, the Patriarch has the right response. Kalashnikov was doing his duty by serving his country with his design. He is not responsible for the misuse of his weapons, any more than Henry Ford is responsible for all the deaths that have occurred because of people driving Ford vehicles.
‘Wish I had an AK-47.
He does not sound like a bad man. I truly hope we are not embracing the liberal idea that the gun is to blame for any killing. It is the holder who fires the weapon.
I can see a man who developed a weapon to help his country be tormented on seeing that same weapon used to enslave and kill others.
I will tip my glass to him tonight. May be rest in peace, and let us meet in the heavenly halls of God.
If the world is going to blame the weapon look no farther than the M-98 Mauser and the Arisaka.
Throw in a British SMLE for good measure.
Then there was Oliver Winchester’s widow who went to a fortune teller who convinced her that the spirits of the dead killed by her husband’s rifle were after her. Keep Building!
Yeah, right. Rest easy, Mikhail. I’m not about to believe the Soviets wouldn’t have gladly murdered their own with a weapon designed by Tokarev, Simonov, or Dragunov.