Sixty years after the AK-47 went into production, designer Mikhail Kalashnikov says he does not stay awake at night worrying about the bloodshed wrought by the world's most popular assault rifle.
'I sleep well. It's the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence,' Mr Kalashnikov said on Friday at a ceremony marking the birth of the rifle, the initials of which stand for 'Avtomat Kalashnikov'.
It was before he started designing the gun that he slept badly, worried about the superior weapons that Nazi soldiers were using with grisly effectiveness against the Red Army in the second world war. He saw them at close range himself, while fighting on the frontlines.
While in hospital after a Nazi shell hit his tank in 1941, Mr Kalashnikov decided to design an automatic rifle with the best features of the American M1 and the German StG44.
'Blame the Nazi Germans for making me become a gun designer,' said Mr Kalashnikov, frail but sharp at age 87. 'I always wanted to construct agricultural machinery.'
Since production began, more than 100 million AK-47s have been made - either in Russia, under licence in dozens of other countries, or illegally. Sergei Chemezov, director of arms-export monopoly Rosoboronexport, said nearly a million a year were produced without a licence.