Mikhail Kalashnikov, Inventor Of The AK-47 Assault Rifle, Regretted It On His Deathbed

Mikhail Kalashnikov with an AK-47 assault rifle (source)

Mikhail Kalashnikov was an inventor.  He started inventing things soon after he joined the Red Army tank brigade, after his family was sent to Siberia during the Soviet purges.  He invented a tank shot counter, a time meter, and even an electric lawnmower.  But the invention that made him famous was an assault rifle -- the AK-47. 

Designed over the course of 6 years, what he ended with in 1947 was a very rugged and reasonably reliable, fully-automatic killing machine which was quickly adopted by the Red Army, anywhere in the world that they fought.  It is cheap to make, easy to maintain, and has a reputation of being very dependable even in the worst environments.

"I made it to protect the motherland," he is quoted as saying.

But the weapon wasn't just in Soviet army hands.  It wasn't long before the gun, and its variants, were in the hands of terrorists, jihadis, and Soviet-armed allies all over the world.  It is still one of the most preferred weapons.  It is arguably the most fired gun in the world, and has been used to kill millions of people and launch revolutions, including in the hands of child soldiers.  It's estimated that there are at least 100 million of the guns currently in use around the world.

It's even featured on the flag of Mozambique , the flag of Hezbollah, and the flag of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

The AK-47 also has become popular with gun nuts in the United States.  Even the little pawn and gun store down the street from me sells a semi-auto version of the AK-47.  "We sell AK-47s!" a sign reads out front.

Last December, Mikhail Kalashnikov died of natural causes at the age of 97:

The flag of Hezbollah, featuring an AK-47 (source)

As his rifles became synonymous with terrorists and rebel armies he was asked if he regretted engineering the weapon that probably killed more than any other.

“I invented it for the protection of the Motherland. I have no regrets and bear no responsibility for how politicians have used it,” he told them.

In fact, he earned many awards and was regarded as a hero of his nation.  He never profited from his deadly invention.

But as the years went by, he began to regret his invention, slowly at first.  Also from that article:

“I’m proud of my invention, but I’m sad that it is used by terrorists,” he said once.

“I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work – for example a lawnmower.”

And in the last few days, news broke about statements that Kalashnikov had made on his deathbed.  This inventor, who had made a weapon to protect his nation's interest, watched over the decades as that weapon was turned against Russian soldiers, against other nations, against citizens by militant extremists, and even against innocent citizens in far away American streets.

Said Mr. Kalashnikov in his deathbed confession to his priest that he felt "spiritual pain" for his lethal invention:

But he wrote to the Patriarch of the Russian church  said the designer felt a degree of guilt  and “ spiritual pain” towards the end of his life for inventing the killing machine.

The letter published by Russian newspaper Izvestia quotes his daughter, Elena, saying she believes a priest helped her father compose the letter, which said:” My spiritual pain is unbearable.”

He asks: “I keep having the same unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people’s lives, then can it be that I... a Christian and an Orthodox believer, was to blame for their deaths?

“The longer I live “the more this question drills itself into my brain and the more I wonder why the Lord allowed man to have the devilish desires of envy, greed and aggression”.

The letter is typed on Kalashnikov’s own personal notepaper and with the wavering signature  describing himself as “a slave of God, the designer Mikhail Kalashnikov”.

And since pro-gun extremists love all things that go "boom," particularly assault rifles, they naturally praise the weapon and its designer, even though he was part of the big, bad evil communist Russia and his invention was used to mow down Americans in every war we've fought since Korea.

Just read what the gun guys have to say about Kalashnikov, his death, and his lethal weapon, on the pro-gun forums and web comments section:

"Damn that sucks. Father of the most famous assault rifle. RIP Mikhail!" (source)

"I just told my AK about it. We had a good cry together. RIP to one of the greatest weapons designers of the 20th century." (source)

"The world has lost a true genius and a hero today." (source)

"Guess I'll fire a 21 gun salute from my own AK-47 variant." (source)

"Rest in Peace. The master tinkerer's invention has probably done more to shape world events than any ideology." (source)

"It was an honor to live in the same century with him." (source)

Here's one gun nut firing through 700 rounds of ammo with his AK-47 in honor of Kalashnikov's passing.  The heat from firing the gun actually causes the wood on the barrel to start smoking.  Say's the shooter, "What can you say? The guns just don't stop runnin'."  See below:

Some people would say that having such a fascination with lethal weapons and their inventors is a sign of mental illness.

Nevermind that the semi-auto version of the AK-47 has been used over and over again to threaten, rob, maim, and kill untold numbers of Americans in our homes and streets.  HERE are some examples, just involving children, that have been posted at the Kid Shootings blog, over the last year or so, including the death of a baby, a 13-year old girl shot by her 19-year old brother with his personal AK-47, two teens killed while riding on ATVs, two boys ages 11 and 14 injured in Miami, and a 5-year old girl here in Oregon shot by a man in the apartment below when he stupidly used his AK-47 as a "crutch."  Cases aren't so hard to find.

So was Kalashnikov a hero or a villian? 

9-month old Delric Miller, killed by an AK-47 in Detroit.

You can't blame a man for designing a weapon meant to be used to defend his nation.  Someone has to do it.  And can you really blame him for mis-use of that weapon?  Probably not.  Though I can say that I don't think I would be able to design a lethal weapon, knowing full well that people would be killed and maimed by my handiwork, and that, like every weapon, it would in some manner wind up in the wrong hands.  Plenty of Russians, jihadists, and revolutionaries would consider him a hero.  Just don't say that to anyone who has lost a loved one or been maimed by an AK-47.

No, the real problem, for us in the United States, is that weapons like the AK-47 have wound up in on our streets, freely available to be bought by anyone -- not just with a background check in a store, but without a background check in a private sale just about anywhere in the U.S.  And, all too often, that gun will wind up in the hands of those who would use them for evil, intentionally or not.  They are designed, by Mr. Kalashnikov, to kill large numbers of people quickly and efficiently.  And, sadly, the AK-47 is being held up as some sort of symbol here in America by the pro-gun crowd who are buying them in record numbers.  Those guns will likely outlive those who purchase them.

Good-bye, Mikhail, but please pardon me if I have no sympathy for your end-of-life regrets.  Your weapons work remarkably well, and homes in the U.S. are still being bloodied for it.


ADDENDUM: From a satirical piece on Kalashnikov's death:

“Comrade Kalashnikov will be buried in a pit of mud with full military honors,” said General-Major Saiga Molot, a spokesman for the Russian army. “After a week, we will exhume his body, clean it off, and put him back to work. We expect that there shall be no issue with his functions.” ....

While praised for his simple operation and ruggedness, Kalashnikov is also being remembered for his contributions to over 300 insurgencies, 524 known terrorist groups and at least 18 hostile regime changes.

“We will always be grateful to General Kalashnikov for giving us the inspiration for Kevlar,” said DuPont President and CEO Ellen Kullman. 

ADDENDUM:  No sooner had I posted this, when there was another shooting in the media involving an AK-47, this time by a 19-year old man firing the weapon in the streets of Vancouver, Washington.

ADDENDUM (1/29/14):  From a related article by the LA Times:

And at times, Kalashnikov himself seemed to sense this: 

“I am proud of my weapon but I am sad that terrorists use it,” he told the Russian online publication newsru.com in 2009. “I wish I had invented a machine which people could use, which could do good for farmers — for example, a sowing machine.” 

A man does what a man does. Kalashnikov designed his weapon to defend his country. He’s not responsible for what happened to it later, to the deadly purposes for which it’s been used. 

But you can’t help thinking how much better off the world would be if he had invented the AK-47 sowing machine.

.

The 3D Printed Gun, And The Shameful Extremist Behind it

The world's first functional 3D printed gun

(UPDATED -- see below)

What would you think of a person who hands a gun, free of charge, no questions asked, to every complete stranger they came across?  Is this insanity, or an example of “freedom?” 

What if the person giving away the guns knew that some of the recipients were felons, domestic abusers, or even terrorists?  Is he a hero of “liberty,” or does this make him an accomplice to murder?

Now, what if the person giving away the guns did so for purely ideological, insurrectionist reasons, advocating for the downfall of all governments?  Is this some sort of honorable libertarian ideal, or the act of a terrorist?

Finally, what if, instead of giving away free guns, he instead gave away plans on how to make them cheaply and secretly? 

Let me introduce you to Cody Wilson and his organization of volunteers, called Defense Distributed.  Wilson has done something not publically done before:  he has used a 3D printer to make plastic assault weapon parts, high-capacity magazines, and, now, a fully-functional gun in its entirety, and distributed the plans for printing them to the entire world, free of charge.

And the plans have been downloaded to the tune of 50,000 downloads on its first day.

The gun he made, which he calls the “Liberator” (designed after a gun dropped behind enemy lines in WWII Europe, China, and the Philippines to aid resistance fighters), is entirely made out of plastic except for a nail for the firing pin and a tiny lump of metal to skirt the law against plastic firearms (the Undetectable Firearms Act, due to expire at the end of 2013).  Of course, the lump of metal is completely unnecessary to the workings of the gun, and anyone printing their own from his plans can omit the lump completely.  Being made of plastic, it is invisible to metal detectors.

And it works.  See below for a video of a test-firing with a .380 handgun round:

No doubt the gun manufacturers, themselves, have been making 3D prints of gun components for years, as part of their R&D, just as engineers and designers do in a wide range of fields.  The difference is that the printed gun parts aren’t intended as the final product, and, more importantly, they don’t share the plans with the rest of the world and whatever nefarious purposes people may have for them. 

It'll be interesting to see if the NRA says anything about this. Will they applaud this invention, given their "more guns in more hands is good" philosophy?  Or will they denounce it, since it would be taking away sales from the chief benefactor of the NRA: gun manufacturers?

Mr. Wilson doesn’t give a damn that his designs could fall into the wrong hands.  He has said so publically.  HERE in an interview with anti-government extremist Alex Jones, Wilson takes pride in the fact that his designs are “on the web forever” and completely unregulated, able to be accessed by anyone, from terrorists to anarchists like himself (another thing he takes pride in).  And he funds 99% of his efforts using Bitcoin, increasingly the currency of drug dealers and illegal arms sellers around the world.

In some interviews, Mr. Wilson has said that this isn’t a “second amendment thing,” but instead plays up the anarchist viewpoint, basically saying that he does it to remove governmental control over some aspect of society.  In one Popular Science Magazine interview, he even suggested he did it as some sort of test of the technology:

I tell people sometimes “we’re not making a Second Amendment argument.” The basic idea is to take a technology, play futurist, and surprise people. What can you do?

But don’t be fooled.  Mr. Wilson is a hardcore gun nut and insurrectionist.  Consider this quote from him, when asked in that interview if his invention is “the right thing to do”:

I heard Joe Scarborough say this, and this is a flagrant example. He said “I was a Second Amendment supporter but this has made me change my mind.” Well, then you never really were serious about it.

Apparently, to be “serious” about the Second Amendment, according to Wilson, you have to be willing to subvert the government.

Wilson even calls himself a “virtue-terrorist”.  And has expressed his insurrectionist philosophy thusly:

Beck, in his January interview, asked Wilson an obvious question: Does he have any concerns over the ends to which this kind of technology can be put?  “We’re doing this project and using this tech as a form of resistance,” the virtue-terrorist replied. “Of course we have concerns at the end of the day, but we see liberty under threat; we see sovereignty under threat. We must respond.”

And when asked about whether he is concerned that kids and other prohibited people could now print a gun using this technology and his designs, Mr. Wilson completely shrugs it off:

This is what so many people say--“well, the mentally ill, felons, and children will all have printable guns.” Well, yeah, sorry, but this is one of the negative dimensions when you lower the barriers to entry for certain things. It just is. So you must have a culture that is prepared to accept and adapt to these kind of realities, instead of pretending with these regulationist ideas that we’re still stuck in. We still just pretend that things are going to keep going the way they’re going--that somehow we’re going to have the resources and the state power to watch everyone’s 3-D printer. That’s absurd. So let’s accommodate.

Yes, that’s right.  Sure, the mentally ill, children or felons can now print their own gun, but, oh well, let’s just accommodate them.

Otherwise known as aiding and abetting.

Currently, the cost of a 3D printer like the one Wilson used runs many thousands of dollars.  Given that anyone (felon, mentally ill, whatever) can purchase a gun from a private seller, no questions asked, just about anywhere in the nation, printing a gun is far more inconvenient and costly.  But the cost becomes worthwhile if you are a prohibited person who is plotting to take a gun through metal detectors (say, in a courthouse, state building, or the U.S. Capitol) and commit an assassination, or if you are an international terrorist organization plotting an attack.  Wilson just saved the terrorists a lot of development time.  I’m sure he’s proud of that and justifies it behind talk of “liberty.”  I wonder what he will think when people start dying as a result.

As one writer at CNN Opinion put it:

Beyond a doubt, calmer heads will want to regulate these things. I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect this is one example in which technology may have raced ahead of the law. Is Defense Distributed selling guns or information? Is this a gun control issue or a First Amendment issue? Can the printers be regulated to refuse to print weapons, or could new designs simply circumvent existing prohibited products? 

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, has expressed interest in legislation to block printable guns, so we'll see where it leads. As he puts it, "We're facing a situation where anyone -- a felon, a terrorist -- can open a gun factory in their garage and the weapons they make will be undetectable. It's stomach-churning." It seems that way. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm probably about as neutral as anyone can be on the issue of gun control. I believe law abiding citizens have constitutional rights to own weapons. But at the same time I believe in reasonable safeguards to make sure access to firearms is limited from criminals and those with chronic mental illnesses. 

In this sense, to me, printable guns are a step in the wrong direction. Granted, the actual impact of printable guns on societal violence is obviously unknown. Perhaps they'll remain so unreliable or difficult to assemble from the individual pieces that the impact will be negligible. Or perhaps not. 

Some have described Defense Distributed's efforts as a kind of political performance art. Very funny, Defense Distributed. We get it. I just hope we don't regret it.

And let's not forget that if someone out there does try to replicate Wilson's design, there's a pretty serious chance that they'll use too weak of plastic and wind up blowing off some fingers upon trying to fire the thing.  Of course, Wilson cares not at all for such concerns.  Public safety isn't a concern of his.

Believe it or not, a relative of mine (who is a teacher now) actually went to high school with Cody Wilson.  She describes him as being “nice and funny”, but “He was a fringe person. Part of the group in school that weren't quite Goths, but looking back as a teacher, one I would have had my eye on.”  Seems to me that Cody Wilson hasn’t changed much.  He might have lost his “not quite Goth” appearance, but I would say he still fits the “fringe” label, and seems to love the attention his morbid and lethal invention has brought him and his terrorist buddies who help him.

All in all, Wilson has shown himself to be full of philosophical babble in describing himself and his “accomplishment,” and has no qualms at all for arming any and all who wish it, but I can’t help but think he is naïve and foolish, and will eventually bear the shame of going down in history as one of the greatest illegal arms enablers in the world.

UPDATE (5/10/13):  The U.S. Defense Department has now forced the free online files for this gun and other gun component, from Cody Wilson, to be taken down from the DefCad website.  According to Wilson, there have been around 100,000 downloads of the plans.

From an article from PCMag.com:

According to a note atop the Defcad website: "Defcad files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information." 

Defcad was announced at this year's SXSW. Its goal was to provide unfettered access to 3D printable firearms, as well as other designs that can be used to print anything from household tools to pharmaceuticals. 

According to a letter from the State Department obtained by Forbes, distribution of the files might be in violation of International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). 

Specifically, the agency is concerned about the blueprint for the "Liberator" handgun, which had its first successful test fire this week, as well as nine other 3D-printed gun files. 

"Until the Department provides Defense Distributed with final [commodity jurisdiction] determinations, Defense Distributed should treat [those files] as ITAR-controlled," the letter said. "This means that all data should be removed from public access immediately."

UPDATE (8/13/13): As I had warned, others are now trying to follow Wilson's lead and optimize his 3D gun design.  Now another gun nut, this time in Canada, has made a working rifle that can fire at least 14 shots.  This isn't an issue that's going away, and presents a dangerous future.  From the article:

The gun maker, a tinkerer who would only reveal his first name, Matthew, told The Verge he felt confident enough about the weapon to fire it by hand, rather than attaching a string to the trigger as he had in earlier tests. 

"I was completely confident to hand fire, and will be taking it out again with a friend with a new barrel this week," he said in an email. 

Matthew had access to a Stratasys Dimension 1200ES industrial 3D printer at his job, where he makes parts for the construction industry. The printers cost $10,000 or more, but low-cost consumer models sell for far less and have ushered a revolution in 3D printing.

UPDATE (7/1/15):  Two felons in Oregon have been caught 3D printing the receivers for AR-15 assault rifles in their home, in order to circumvent the law.  Cody Wilson must be so proud that he is enabling felons to have lethal weapons....

UPDATE (11/25/15):  A man has now figured out how to 3D print a working revolver that fires .22 bullets.