Death of a gunmaker... Mikhail Kalashnikov has left humankind sometimes better... yet through loss!

Western media no doubt will bring up anything to discredit the man, I am sure there is much. The guns he made were incisive and changed the people and the landscape of the planet upon which we rest. Perhaps if he were an American he would be celebrated: The creator of the most deadly gun in history, the one that has killed the most people. That is a terrible title to hold. If he were Western though, they would praise him for it. Would the maker of the Sherman Tank or the Apache helicoptor be seen as a monster in Western worldviews?

Yet, what else can be said of the AK 47, the legacy of Kalashnikov? It is the gun on which most guns are based in the military world. It is the weapon of choice for revolutionaries and those who otherwise would be dead at government hands. It is a durable weapon. It is a great feat of engineering, just as diesel was. Both come from that unfortunate system which yes was a statist system which thrived on mass murder and government theft from the people the government pretended even to themselves that they served.

Does this make the USSR a good? No. It does make Kalashnikov a man who made an engineering feat, and a man who deeply changed history. The original guns are what caused the French Revolution and the American one. Both can be viewed as great evils or powerful forces for change and even eventually as goods. This might not have been so clear in the American civil war, as revolution turned brother against brother and cost many lives for the sake of a small, yet vital thing: principle. AK 47s made equal what was not... for but a short while. Those who used them were much as the early American rebels... these weapons are still used to slaughter masses and to protect many.

Are guns evil? No. They are a means to an end.

Was Kalashnikov an evil man?

A journalist from Russia Today thinks not: ' [I] interviewed Mikhail Kalashnikov 3 times over the last 10 years. He was such a humble and noble man. RIP,' Alexey Yaroshevsky mourned, 'I asked Kalashnikov if he felt jealous. He said, "I could've had billions, but I didn't want it. All I ever wanted is [for] my country to be safe."'