Tax 'Em

He was in a lot of pain, he was suffering posttraumatic stress disorder, he was with a minor celebrity—Chris Kyle, a navy SEAL who was an expert marksman: Kyle had killed 160 Iraqis and then came home to write a bestseller about it. Oh, and also to champion the cause of returning veterans, and, Sunday, reach out to one of them, Eddie Ray Routh. So what did Eddie Ray—the man in pain, the guy suffering PTSD—do? He killed Kyle and another guy.

It’s a story that breaks the heart. Routh spent four years in the Marines, though the story in CNN says it’s “unclear” whether he saw combat. But do you get PTSD if you’re cleaning latrines in a base in Austria? Never heard of that….

Kyle was an outspoken opponent of gun control, says the story, and had set up a security company, Craft International, which had the motto, “Despite what your momma told you, violence does solve problems.”

Maybe so. It’s an irony that I am so ardently for gun control, because well, take a look at the following chart….

OK—cancel that. After thirty minutes of fruitless searching, I realize that I hadn’t saved it, and could no longer remember where I had found it. So here’s what it looked like: all fifty states ranked in order by red versus blue and incidence of gun mortality. And no surprise, virtually all the red states were at the top of the list. Meaning, as an ardently blue guy, that I should just stand by and let everyone down there in the red states kill each other. Problema—Resuelto! as our old governor used to say. Problem—Fixed!

Well, it’s tempting to say, “live by the gun, die by the gun.” Except that Kyle leaves behind a couple of kids. Oh, and speaking of kids—the little-five year old who was abducted by the crazy guy in the tornado shelter is free. Crazy guy is dead; the kid is seemingly OK.

Or maybe not. You know, there are a couple of points here.

Let me tell you about one of the most enchanting moments I’ve ever spent in an art museum. It was in the seventies, I was in the Art Institute of Chicago, in a room filled with Monet haystacks. That’s nice, you think, but what’s the point?

I was completely alone. There was no guard, no security, no Plexiglas—nothing between me and those gorgeous canvasses.

Those days are gone, but that’s not my point. Here it is: the billions of dollars we now spend searching for fluids of more than three ounces in my luggage or protecting art from maniacs or—for that matter—dealing with a lunatic for six days who has abducted a five year old kid…that money? It’s wasted.

It doesn’t add anything to our economy, not in real, substantial terms. Teaching a kid to read adds some value—he will possibly go on and discover the cure for cancer. Putting an armed guard in a school is a waste of resources. I’ve lived in a time when the only people in school were the kids, the teachers, principal and a nurse.

Second point?

I got laid off a year and a half ago. It produced a number of effects, not the least of which was insomnia. So what did I do, at 3AM when I woke up?

Have a drink!

Had to get back to sleep, right? There’s only one problem. If you do that, you are potentially drinking for two-thirds of the day, since of course you will wait until five to declare the sun over the yardarm. So when I strolled into my shrink’s office at 8AM for that first visit he smelled alcohol on my breath.

So I learned that, and a lot of other stuff. But getting laid off is less stressful than having your husband or father die. It’s less stressful than having a crazy guy abduct you or your son. There’s huge pain here, which is either going to go on and cause more pain, or going to take a lot of time and money to clean up.

And who should bear the cost?

You know my answer. We took on cigarettes, and made Big Tobacco pay (partially) the bill. I’m mixed on that—at least in theory people should be able to quit. There is some element of choice, and therefore personal responsibility here. But sitting in a movie theater, or a kindergarten classroom, or strolling through a mall?

There are 300 million guns in the United States. And each one should be registered, and their owners pay a fearsome tax annually for the damage they are capable of doing.

Claude Monet, Haystacks (Effect of Snow and Sun), 1891, oil on canvas, 25 3/4" x 36 1/4". (Metropolitan Museum of  Art, New York).

Knew I had it somewhere....