THERE is a degree of irony in the fact that Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, the inventor of a firearm that became a staple for at least one of the sides in the majority of armed conflicts around the world since it went into production in 1947, died a peaceful death on Thursday at the age on 94. The Avtomat Kalashnikov, popularly known as the AK-47 assault rifle, was designed in 1942. The Nazi army had been halted at Stalingrad, and Russians sent up to the front were dying — not just because guns were in extremely short supply but also because they mainly had rifles while the Germans were armed with MP44 machine guns. Salvation of sorts was dreamt up by Kalashnikov. Since then, the AK-47 has empowered fighters ranging from the warlords of Mogadishu to the child soldiers of Liberia, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to the Vietcong, from Che Guevara and Al Fatah to the Shining Path. It has even found nationalistic expression on the flag of Mozambique. Given that it is relatively simple to replicate (no patent was ever taken out), and while not particularly accurate, functions relatively well in wet or sandy conditions that jam more sophisticated weapons, it has been manufactured around the world by the hundreds of thousands. There is an estimate, in fact, that there is one Soviet/Russia-made Kalashnikov for every 70 people on earth — and that’s not counting replicas made elsewhere, Pakistan included.

This country has, over the recent decades, had good reason to rue the entrenchment of the Kalashnikov culture. The tendency to resort to arms, to which society started becoming addicted in the ’80s, has only grown stronger, and no end is yet in sight. But the death of Kalashnikov may be a reason to reflect that a weapon is, after all, only as lethal as the intent of the person who carries it. The path to establishing peace in Pakistan is to address the causes of violence; the methods are but a roadblock.