In a Chicago Tribune editorial this week, Jim Strickler of Evanston, Illinois made a very good point.

Many of us view the NRA and Wayne LaPierre has a wart on American society that not only makes our country look bad, but as someone that is also directly responsible for tens of thousands of senseless gun deaths in American every year. Our gun laws (or lack thereof) are beyond tragic.

But as a marketer, Wayne LaPierre is an absolute genius. Not only does he twist the US Constitution into some bizarre argument that our founding fathers meant for any American to have any gun, and as many guns, as they might desire. He skips right over the whole “A well regulated militia” opening to that paragraph. He goes well beyond that! He loves to stand up in front of crowds and rev up the fear by talking about all the reasons we need guns to protect ourselves. From claiming it is too dangerous for children to play outside, to stoking fears of terrorists, to talk of “knock out games,” “haters,” “campus killers,” “shopping mall killers,” and “airport killers,” Wayne LaPierre serves as one of the greatest marketers in American history.

He has succeeded in making guns more prevalent than every before. He has succeeded in preventing laws to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and wife beaters.

But most importantly, he has succeeded in making guns incredibly easy for criminals to obtain! With the legislative agenda he has bought his way into, he has put more guns in the hands of more criminals and sociopaths to insure that we continue to have horrific headlines about gun crimes across the country. And with each one, he gets up and tells us we should have more guns.

Pure. Marketing. Genius.

And pure evil!