Roop

This is the man who invented the AK-47, firing it in Virginia in 1990. The man next to him invented the M16. Their rifles faced each other in Vietnam. Stoner got paid for every M16 Colt sold. Kalashnikov never got royalties. Before he died, he wrote a letter to his church. Mikhail Kalashnikov was a Soviet tank sergeant. He started designing the rifle in a hospital bed after he was wounded in 1941. Eugene Stoner was a former Marine. The Smithsonian brought them together for one week in May 1990. There are around 100 million AKs in the world today. For years Kalashnikov said he slept well. The politicians were to blame, not him. In 2002 he said he wished he had invented something for farmers instead. A lawnmower. Then the letter, to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church: “The pain in my soul is unbearable.” “If my rifle took away people’s lives, then can it be that I... am guilty for people’s deaths?” He died in 2013, at 94. Is the man who designs a gun responsible for what people do with it?