“The Izhevsk Machine Tool Factory acquired a patent in 1999, illegalising (sic) manufacture of the Kalashnikov rifle system by anyone other than themselves.”
From Wikipedia
That’s so quaint– the Izhevsk Machine Tool company– 50 years after it first started manufacturing the AK-47– suddenly decides to patent it, and demand that everyone else stop copying their design. Those design pirates, you see, who make these weapons so they can sell them to governments and guerrilla movements, which then use them to murder people (call it “war” if you like), are doing something illegal.
This equation, this syllogism, this logic, this reasoning, this state of affairs— this calculation of the commerce of human depravity: my patent of this machine used to kill people, to over-throw governments, to kill protestors and organizers and nuns, to stop the enraged population from storming the palace, is worth money. Pay me for the right to do evil.
The Izhevks Machine Tool Factory could never have dared to make such an assertion if we did not live in a world of raging hypocrisy. They should have denied that they had anything to do with this weapon. They should have sued for libel anyone who said, “the design of this gun is obviously stolen from the work of Mikhail Kalashnikov…”.
How dare you! How dare you assert that we would have created or built such a device, or — even worse– made a profit by selling it to people who obviously can only have one purpose in mind….”