The inventor of the popular AK-47 gun was secretly tormented by “unbearable spiritual agony”. Mikhail Kalashnikov, whose automatic rifle first went into production in 1947, became a Soviet hero and died recently at 94. Publicly, he never accepted any responsibility for those killed by the gun. But last year, in a letter to the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Kalashnikov described being burdened by “the unsolved question: if my rifle claimed people’s lives, then can it be that I… was to blame for their deaths? The longer I live, the more this question drills itself into my brain.”

“It isn’t the gun, it is the owner of the gun that is to blame for gun deaths”. This is the mantra of the NRA. But is this right? If Kalashnikovs were locked up safely and used only for national defense, as presumably intended, then Mr. K could have had a clear conscience. But criminals and gun advocates, exercising their ridiculous, counter-intuitive “constitutional rights”, have ensured that AK47s and similar guns are out there, and thousands of lives are being lost. The AK47 is a menace, but the deaths are not the personal responsibility of Mr. K. If they were there are tens of thousands of other people who should also be equally tormented. Maybe they are, but I doubt it.

Personally, I am totally uninterested in killing animals that are no threat to me or my family, although some control of deer numbers seems to be common sense (a safety matter). But if you have to have a gun I can’t understand the objection to locking it up at home and having your security arrangements checked by the police on a regular basis. What do you have to hide?