Republicans are to be blamed as well.
On 23 December, the AK-47 inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov, died at a Russian hospital after being admitted a month earlier with internal bleeding.
In a letter, published in Russia’s pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia, he wrote: “My spiritual pain is unbearable.
“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?” he asked.
“The longer I live,” he continued, “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 personal writing paper, and is signed with a wavering hand by the man who describes himself as “a slave of God, the designer Mikhail Kalashnikov”.
The Kalashnikov, or AK-47, is one of the world’s most familiar and widely used weapons.
Its comparative simplicity made it cheap to manufacture, as well as reliable and easy to maintain.
It is thought that more than 100 million Kalashnikov rifles have been sold worldwide.
Kalashnikov refused to accept responsibility for the many people killed by his weapon, blaming the policies of other countries that acquired it.
However, pride in his invention was tempered with sadness at its use by criminals and child soldiers.
“It is painful for me to see when criminal elements of all kinds fire from my weapon,” Kalashnikov said in 2008.
