Mikhail Kalashnikov, the Russia's AK-47 assault rifle designer who died on December 23, 2013, said before he died that the pain he felt fearing he was to blame for the deaths caused by his weapon was "unbearable," The Associated Press reported.
Kalhasnikov wrote a letter on April 7, 2013 to the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
"I keep asking myself the same unknowable question: If my rifle deprived people of life, does it mean that I, Mikhail Kalashnikov, age 93, the son of a peasant and an Orthodox Christian, am responsible for people's deaths, even if they are enemies? The longer I live, the more the 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," he wrote in the two-page, typewritten letter to Moscow Patriarch and Russian Orthodox Church Primate Kirill, and was published in pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attended his funeral.
The AK-47, which was which Kalashnikov developed in 1945, "remains in its later variants the world's most popular firearm because of its durability, low production cost, availability and ease of use. More than 100 million of the assault rifles are widely believed in use around the world," The AP reported.
"It is painful for me to see when criminal elements of all kinds fire my weapon," Kalashnikov admitted in 2008.
"The Church has a very definite position: When weapons serve to protect the Fatherland, the Church supports both its creators and the soldiers who use it. He designed this rifle to defend his country, not so terrorists could use it in Saudi Arabia " said Press Secretary Cyril Alexander Volkov.
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