任何个人和组织转载前须标明出处【肖萧潇的世界】
School shootings, again
America seems unable to solve a scourge that exists nowhere else
美国似乎无法解决任何其他地方都没有的祸害。
There is nothing surprising in this article, unfortunately
不幸的是，这篇文章没有什么令人惊讶的。
Feb 17th 2018 | NEW YORK
JUST before the end of the school day on February 14th at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high-school in Parkland, Florida, the fire alarm rang out. Most of the pupils and teachers thought it was just a drill. It was not: a gunman had pulled the alarm to draw out the maximum number of targets. The gunman killed 17 and injured more than a dozen, some critically. Local television stations reported that the slaughter appeared to be the worst mass murder in the history of Broward County, an affluent area north of Miami.
就在教学日结束之前，在Marjory Stoneman Douglas高中，火灾警报响了。大多数学生和老师认为这只是一个演习。事实并非如此：一名持枪歹徒拉起警报，瞄准了最多的目标数。枪手打死了17人，打伤十多人，其中一些人伤势严重。当地电视台报道，在布劳沃德县历史上，这次枪击是最严重的大规模屠杀，布劳沃德县是迈阿密的一个富裕的北部地区。
As that might suggest, America is running out of superlatives to describe its frequent gun massacres. The killing in Florida, whose perpetrator was later arrested, was a bad one. It was America’s deadliest school shooting in five years—since a man killed 20 children, six adults and himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Connecticut. Then again, looked at another way, it was merely America’s 18th school shooting this year. By the reckoning of the Gun Violence Archive, the killing in Florida was the country’s 1,607th mass shooting since Sandy Hook. In other words, America has had more than one mass shooting every day since then, costing 1,846 lives. (The database includes mass woundings in its count, which is why the numbers of mass shootings and killings are roughly even.)
这也许表明，美国用尽了溢美之词来形容其频繁的枪屠杀。佛罗里达州的杀人行为是一个很严重的谋杀案。枪手随后被逮捕。这是美国五年来最致命的校园枪击事件。五年前，一名男子在康涅狄格桑迪胡克小学杀死了20个孩子，六个大人和他本人。然而，从另一个角度来看，这仅仅是今年美国的第十八所学校枪击案。据《枪支暴力档案》的统计，佛罗里达州的枪击事件是该国自桑迪胡克枪击事件以来第一千六百零七次大规模枪击事件。换言之，从那时起，美国每天都有超过一次的大规模枪击事件，造成1846人死亡。（该数据库包括大规模射伤，这就是为什么大规模枪击和杀戮的数目大致相等。）
Police identified the gunman as Nikolas Cruz, a 19-year old former pupil of the school expelled a year ago for disciplinary problems. He was described as a strange kid who liked guns. Unlike many mass shooters, Mr Cruz did not intend to die. He slipped out of the school by blending in with evacuating pupils. Police caught him in a nearby town soon after the shooting. Scott Israel, the county sheriff, said his officers are investigating the shooter’s digital profile. What they have found so far, he said, is “very, very disturbing.”
警方证实枪手为Nikolas克鲁兹，一个19岁的辍学生，学校开除了他，因为纪律问题。他被描述成一个喜欢枪的奇怪的孩子。与许多杀手不同，克鲁兹先生并不打算死。他与学生们一起疏散，溜出了学校。枪击事件后不久警方就在附近的一个城镇逮捕了他。郡治安官史葛.以色列说，他的官员正在调查枪手的数字档案。他说，到目前为止，他们发现的“非常，非常令人不安”。
The superintendent of Broward County’s public schools, Robert Runcie, appeared to blame the killing on the poor state of Americans’ mental health. “What I’ll tell you is that mental health issues in this country are growing and it’s a challenge.” That is an explanation favoured on the right. It does not take account of the fact that the toll of gun violence in other rich countries, with comparable health indicators, is negligible by comparison. America’s gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher than a group of 22 other developed countries, according to the American Journal of Medicine. This is mainly because America has so many more guns than those other countries. It has less than 5% of the world’s population and almost half of the world’s civilian-owned firearms.
布劳沃德县的公立学校，校长Robert Runcie，似乎责怪美国人的心理健康状态不佳。“我要告诉你的是，这个国家的精神健康问题正在日益严峻，这是一个挑战。”它没有考虑到其他富裕国家的枪支暴力与可比健康指标相比，可以忽略不计的事实。据《美国医学杂志》报道，美国与枪支相关的谋杀率比其他22个发达国家高出25倍。这主要是因为美国的枪比其他国家多。它拥有不到世界人口的5%的人民，却几乎占世界民用枪支的一半。
Not convinced of a connection there? There is more. Florida, where more than 1.4m people have licences to carry concealed weapons, has some of the laxest gun laws. To buy an AR-15 rifle, the model used by Mr Cruz, which is based on the M-16 assault rifle, requires a background check so cursory the authorities almost might as well not bother. It takes a few minutes. And if you happen to be on the FBI’s terrorist watch-list at the time, no problem. Similar laws put guns in the hands of shooters who killed 14 people during an office Christmas party in California in 2015, 49 people in a Florida nightclub in 2016, and 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas in 2017.
不相信有联系吗？还有更多。在佛罗里达州，超过140万人携带隐蔽武器许可证，具有几乎是最宽松的枪支法。买一个AR-15步枪，由克鲁兹先生使用的模型，它是基于M-16突击步枪，只是要求草率背景调查，而且当局几乎也不打扰。这只需要几分钟时间。如果你碰巧在FBI的恐怖监视名单上，没问题。类似的法律把枪支交给了2015年在加利福尼亚举行的办公室圣诞派对中杀害14人的枪手，2016年佛罗里达州一家夜总会杀害49人的凶手，2017年在拉斯维加斯举行的乡村音乐节上杀害58人的人。
Most federal gun legislation is not about banning guns, but allowing them in more places, including college campuses and churches. Indeed a bill making its way through Congress now relates to extending concealed carry laws to states which outlaw concealed weapons. Chris Murphy, a Democrat who represents Connecticut, happened to be on the Senate floor when news of the shooting broke. “We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else,” he said.
大多数联邦枪支立法并不是禁止枪支，而是允许更多的地方使用枪支，包括大学校园和教堂。事实上，法案通过国会，现在涉及将隐藏的携带法律延伸到曾经将便携式武器视为非法武器的州。代表康涅狄格的民主党人Chris Murphy在枪击事件发生时碰巧在参议院。他说：“我们对这个国家发生的大规模暴行负有责任。
In response to this latest, wholly predictably, almost habitual, tragedy, President Donald Trump tweeted his “prayers and condolences”. He added: “No child, teacher or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.” That is true. And if he would like to make them safer, he knows what to do. He simply needs to demand the stricter gun controls Republicans recoil from but which, back in his Democratic years, Mr Trump used to favour.
为了回应这一最新的、完全可以预见的、几乎是习惯性的悲剧，唐纳德·特朗普总统在他的推特上表示“祈祷和哀悼”。他补充说：“在美国的学校里，孩子、老师或其他任何人都不应该感到不安全。”如果他想让他们更安全，他知道该怎么做。他只需要要求共和党人更严格地控制枪支，但在民主党时代，特朗普曾经支持它。
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