VOA标准英语2013--专家称枪支暴力引发美国公众危机

 

Experts: Gun Violence Is Public Health Crisis in US 专家称枪支暴力引发美国公众危机

WASHINGTON — Gun violence in the United States has claimed the lives of more than 30,000 men, women and children in recent years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors and public health specialists say gun violence is at epidemic¹ levels, calling it a major public health threat.

华盛顿——根据疾病控制和预防中心报告在美国枪支暴力在最近几年已经导致30000多个男人,妇女和儿童遇难。医生和公共卫生专家说,枪支暴力正在流行,称这是一个重大的公共卫生威胁。

Americans stayed riveted² to news channels on September 16. A gunman shot and killed 12 people at the Navy Yard in Washington before he was shot and killed. Mass shootings in the U.S. happen so frequently they are no longer unimaginable.

President Barack Obama lamented³ this latest one. "We're confronting yet another mass shooting. This one happened on a military installation in the nation's capital."

An organization of U.S. mayors reports that there have been more than 50 mass shootings in the past four years.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, killers⁴ used guns to murder 11,000 people in 2010 in the U.S., the latest year for which statistics are available. Twenty-thousand others used guns to commit suicides that year, and another 73,000 people were rushed to hospital emergency rooms for gunshot wounds.

Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian from the Harvard School of Public Health says the problem is partly due to gun violence displayed in the media.

"We have a culture that really glorifies⁵ gun violence to a level and a depth and an intensity⁶ that's actually never been in place before in the United States," said Mozaffarian. He supports laws to reduce gun violence.

"We can make guns safer by having automatic security locks so only the owners can use them. We could pass policies that require certain gun storage safety the same way that we require kids to sit in child seats to make cars safer. We can require that guns be stored in locked, safe cabinets so kids can't reach them," said Mozaffarian.

Obama is again calling on lawmakers to act on gun control. Legislation did not make it through Congress following the mass shooting of 20 school children and six adults last December in Newtown, Connecticut.

Research shows that many Americans agree that something has to be done. Colleen Barry at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health said, “Our study showed that there was broad support among gun owners and non-gun owners alike for a spectrum⁷ of different types of policies aimed at restricting gun ownership from potentially dangerous people."

The CDC reports that initiatives to reduce gun-related violence can draw upon growing research about behavior and environmental factors associated with this type of violence. 

1 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

2 riveted   

铆接( rivet的过去式和过去分词 )； 把…固定住； 吸引； 引起某人的注意

参考例句：

• I was absolutely riveted by her story. 我完全被她的故事吸引住了。
• My attention was riveted by a slight movement in the bushes. 我的注意力被灌木丛中的轻微晃动吸引住了。

3 lamented   

adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• her late lamented husband 她那令人怀念的已故的丈夫
• We lamented over our bad luck. 我们为自己的不幸而悲伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 killers   

凶手( killer的名词复数 )； 消灭…者； 致命物； 极难的事

参考例句：

• He remained steadfast in his determination to bring the killers to justice. 他要将杀人凶手绳之以法的决心一直没有动摇。
• They were professional killers who did in John. 杀死约翰的这些人是职业杀手。

5 glorifies   

赞美( glorify的第三人称单数 )； 颂扬； 美化； 使光荣

参考例句：

• He denies that the movie glorifies violence. 他否认这部影片美化暴力。
• This magazine in no way glorifies gangs. 这本杂志绝对没有美化混混们。

6 intensity   

n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度

参考例句：

• I didn't realize the intensity of people's feelings on this issue.我没有意识到这一问题能引起群情激奋。
• The strike is growing in intensity.罢工日益加剧。

7 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。