On his deathbed Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov asked the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church if he was responsible for the deaths of those who had been shot as a result of the design of his AK-47. Kalashnikov was worried about his legacy: he had wanted to be remembered as a poet, not a gunmaker. The patriarch wrote back to say that the Church’s position was well known and if a weapon was used in defense of the Motherland, the Church would support its creators and those who used it.
