From an April 7, 2012, letter by Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the AK-47 assault rifle, to Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Kalashnikov died in December 2013; the letter was published this January in the Russian newspaper Izvestia. There are an estimated 100 million AK-47-style rifles in global circulation. Translated from the Russian by Sophia Kishkovsky.

Your Holiness!

I am credited with more than 150 types of small arms, created for one goal — to ensure the reliable defense of our Fatherland. No one will be able to disabuse me of the folk wisdom that advises to “keep your powder…