Quote

I don't believe there's any reason for a person like myself to own an AK-47.

People often ask me how I feel about my invention being used to kill people every day and the AK being a common weapon of ethnic conflicts. I want to make it clear that I created my assault rifle to protect my country. You can blame politicians for its spreading out of control on a global scale.

It is not rifles but people who triumph, and the conclusion from all the wars is that we need better people, not better rifles - to win wars, and mainly to avoid them.

We hear so much about weapons of mass destruction. But nine out of 10 war victims are killed by guns. It's the AK-47 that's a weapon of mass destruction.

I have to be honest - I don't love guns.

Having traveled to parts of the world where war has done its usual nasty work on people's lives, I have come to develop a particular hatred for the shape, the look, the sound of the AK-47.

I consider any gun that can chamber a round and send a projectile down its barrel at a high rate of speed into my body - causing me injury or death - to be an assault weapon.

I don't know anyone in the hunting or sporting arena that goes out with an assault rifle.

The truth is that a number of us have been saying for quite some time that it was only a matter of time until someone went to a gun show, bought a military-like semi-automatic assault weapon with a large capacity magazine, and did enormous damage.

I've come to the conclusion that military style weapons really don't have any place in our society. We ought to reinstate the assault weapons ban that served us well for 10 years from 1994 to 2004.