I had five good friends in uni days in New Zealand — African students who were militant anti-colonialists from Zimbabwe (then Ian Smith's "Southern Rhodesia") and Apartheid South Africa — who saw the "Kali" as a necessary tool of liberation. They were all seeking educaton for their liberated homelands.

I remember one of them thanking a precious, pious (and very naive) Bible Society guy who presented them with Bibles at an International Students Association night in Auckland:  "Thank you, sir. A Bible and a Kalishnikov are a liberation movement for us in Africa. We will put our Bibles to good use when we get home."

Of the five, one was found shot up in a ditch in Rhodesia, one died in a South African prison, one was killed fighting "security forces" in Rhodesia and one simply vanished after he got back to Africa. One, who is still a very good friend, went back to Zambia. My dad later helped him get entry to New Zealand where he became a highly valued computer programme developer and has worked in Europe, the U.S. as well as N.Z.

It's sad: where there could have been five badly needed, highly skilled professionals working for free African states, there are none… thanks to colonialism, racism and oppression. Kalishnikovs, like the Bible, were on their side and have very little to do with the deaths of four and the migration of one. Maybe that's not quite right… like the Bible, the Kalishnikov gave them the hope that change was possible.

Nelson Mandela's extraordinary achievements were, in a necessary sense, made possible by the many native Africans who perished in the guns and blood war, in police stations and in prison torture chambers and execution yards.

It's best not to judge, Mendalla.

Thanks Mike.

And, statistically speaking, was likely what killed them. For every liberator that has packed an AK, so has an oppressor. In many of the wars in the weapon's nearly 70 years, both sides carried it or a version of it.

A weapon doesn't take sides, it just kills whoever it is told to kill. It does not liberate or oppress; it just makes both easier.

Would the world be a better place without the AK? Nope. We would just find some other way to kill people. Kalashnikov is not to blame for how his invention has been used. The fix, in the end, is not to get rid of the weapons (though that can help if done in concert with other measures) or deride the skills of the inventors but to eliminate the reasons to use them.

I'm not. He is not, as I have already said, to blame for how the invention has been used. At the time he created the AK-47, he believed he was helping protect his nation from a re-run of WWII and had no idea that it would be used far beyond that nation's borders. I actually admire Mikhail Kalashnikov as an engineer. The AK is a model of simplicity and practicality that almost any technology could learn from.

Mendalla

Mandela's not a hero in my mind for what he participated in before he went to prison, but the transformation he brought about while in there, and when he got out. AK's are not God's gift to anyone. Take it back a few millenia, neither were spears or slingshots- for anything other than hunting food. And the AK was never designed with that in mind. A model of simplicity and practicality? Practical, for what?! Again, spears and slingshots. If we hadn't 'evolved' (devolved is more like it) to using more modern weapons, people of many nations would still be oppressing other people with those 'practical' and simple weapons, such as spears and slingshots. Look what we learned from that. Nothing. The AK was never necessary, and neither were any of the weapons before it. There is nothing good to say about it. It's a vile, evil, killing machine- and I don't give a damn about its engineering. What a waste of brain power- just like every other weapon of war ever invented- right back to the slingshot. If the powers that run the world only put as much thought into how to spread peace as they have about how to wage war...

Weird topic on Christmas Eve Day. Peace on earth, and all that stuff?

Hi Kimmio:

Not a weird topic on Christmas Eve, but a poignant one.

For there to be Peace on Earth, we have to lay aside our weapons of agression, together with the agression itself. Forge swords into plough shares and spears into pruning hooks, and all that.

To design and manufacture ever better weapons, just to stay ahead of the perceived enemy, is a suicidal course for humanity.

An eye for an eye makes to whole world blind.

-Desmond Tutu

Wasn't the quote from Gandhi? ;) nevertheless, true, no matter who said it.

Here's what we can do with Mr. Kalishnikov's invention:

http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/why-shane-claiborne-began-turning-guns-i...

This link is better. With photos:

http://www.redletterchristians.org/beating-ak47s-into-shovels/

Yes, could have been Gandhi.

Right on!