美国有线新闻 CNN 2013-02-12

 The special 360 town hall, guns under fire from the George Washington university in the nation's capital. In the nearly 7 weeks, since the rampage in Newtown Connecticut silenced 27 lives, a national debate over gun has only grown louder and more urgent. There was shooting just today in a middle school in southeast Atlanta, a student was hit. So the need for action is clear. Often however, the debate over what to do ends in shouting and pointed¹ fingers. Which is why tonight we want, try to cut through the talking points and the slogans, and have an actual discussion that zeros in on some key issues and what goals, if any, or actually achievable. We've got people here with many different experiences, many different opinions and backgrounds, they are all represented in this room. Gun control advocates, people opposed to greater gun control, victims of crimes, people who use guns to protect themselves and their families. We start, though, with a look at what's at stake.

Columbine, Virginia Tech, Arurora, Newtown. It's an all too familiar pattern, mass shootings followed by a national dialogue on one of the most polarizing issues in America. Gun control.

But any attempt to alter our relatively² easy access to guns rarely gets off the ground. The last time a federal gun control legislation was passed was in 1994. A year after, a shooter armed with semiautomatic handguns, shot and killed eight people in an office building in downtown San Francisco. The shooter was reportedly able to fire 30 shots without reloading, causing outrage³ among gun control advocates.

"The 19 assault weapons banned by this proposal are deadly, dangerous weapons. They were designed for one purpose only, to kill people."

The manufacturing of semiautomatic weapons with magazines of more than 10 rounds of ammunition⁴ was banned for ten years. But still, the shootings continued. In 1999, 23 people were wounded, and 13 killed at Columbine high school. The shooters used semiautomatic weapons they obtained illegally. By the time the assault weapons ban expired in 2004, its effectiveness was questioned. The congressional research service could not definitively⁵ found a cause of connection between firearms and violence. They wrote, quote, "Existing data do not show whether the number of people shot and killed was semiautomatic assault weapons declined during the ten-year-period that those firearms were banned.

1 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

2 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

3 outrage   

n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒

参考例句：

• When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
• We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。

4 ammunition   

n.军火，弹药

参考例句：

• A few of the jeeps had run out of ammunition.几辆吉普车上的弹药已经用光了。
• They have expended all their ammunition.他们把弹药用光。

5 definitively   

adv.决定性地，最后地

参考例句：

• None of the three super-states could be definitively conquered even by the other two in combination. 三个超级国家中的任何一国都不可能被任何两国的联盟所绝对打败。 来自英汉文学
• Therefore, nothing can ever be definitively proved with a photograph. 因此，没有什么可以明确了一张照片。 来自互联网