金融时报:爱枪者，美国选民

爱枪者，美国选民

爱枪的是美国选民，而且他们越来越爱枪，即使康州惨案发生后，控枪也是最不受欢迎的措施之一。FT专栏作家考德威尔(Christopher Caldwell)指出，是美国选民，而不是NRA，阻止政客控枪。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

carnage ['kɑːnɪdʒ] n.大屠杀

Seung-Hui Cho 韩国学生赵承熙，由于精神不稳定，于2007年4月16日在弗吉尼亚理工大学枪杀了包括自己在内的33人。

foie gras ['fwɑ:'ɡrɑ:] n.鹅肝酱

constituency[kən'stɪtjʊənsɪ] n.选民

disgruntled [dɪs'grʌnt(ə)ld] adj.不满的；不高兴的

It’s US voters who really love weapons (824 words)

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told a reporter at the National Journal: “This level of carnage is something that the elected officials aren’t going to be able to ignore.”

Mr Helmke’s words sound correct, as the US continues to reel from the murder of 20 six and seven-year-olds in a school in Newtown, Connecticut, in mid-December. Then again, his words also seemed correct when he first uttered them, which was back in April 2007, just after a disturbed undergraduate, Seung-Hui Cho, massacred 32 people on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic University before turning his weapons on himself. Elected officials have proved quite capable of ignoring Cho’s rampage, not to mention several more since then. There is no guarantee the outrage over Newtown will spur them to action, either.

In seeking to prevent the next massacre, it is natural and right to focus on mass gun ownership, American’s modern-day peculiar institution. There may be a quarter of a billion guns in private hands in the US, and yet the government regulates them less stringently than it does foie gras, tobacco or office humour.

President Barack Obama has called for the revival of a ban on so-called assault weapons that was in place for a decade after 1994. On Wednesday he put Vice-President Joe Biden in charge of a task force on gun violence. But Mr Biden will have little scope for action. The lobbying power of the National Rifle Association is part of the problem, but only a small part. The constituency for serious gun control in the US is shrinking.

We know where Mr Obama’s heart is on guns. He doesn’t like them. He would sincerely like to regulate them. To a roomful of rich San Francisco donors in 2008 he described disgruntled workers who “cling to guns and religion”. And yet it is hardly an exaggeration to say that gun control is a topic that the president has, until now, never discussed in public, except to describe himself as a defender of the second amendment, which protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”.

The problem for Mr Obama is that his party’s smartest political consultants decided several elections ago that hostility to guns was killing the Democratic party, and they have been proved right in almost every election since. Forty-seven per cent of Americans have guns in their homes.

After Bill Clinton signed his ban on assault weapons, Democrats lost the congressional majority they had held for four decades. Al Gore might have been elected president in 2000 had he not sought to paint himself as more liberal on guns than Bill Bradley, his Democratic primary challenger. Democrats won the Senate back in 2006 when they recruited gun-enthusiasts as candidates (Jim Webb in Virginia, Jon Tester in Montana, Bob Casey Jr in Pennsylvania), enforced a candidates’ vow of silence on gun control and then put the chamber under the control of a gun-friendly majority leader, Harry Reid.

This alliance has had consequences. Senators reportedly agreed to alter their landmark 2010 health reform to prevent insurers from charging higher premiums to gun owners.

It is voters, not the NRA, who are intimidating Democrats. For reasons no one has fully explained, Americans are getting fonder and fonder of firearms. In the 1950s, 60 per cent of Americans said they would support a ban on handguns, according to Gallup; in 2011, 73 per cent said they would oppose one. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Connecticut shootings, gun control strikes voters as among the least appealing remedies. This week Gallup showed 42 per cent felt gun bans would be effective, well behind beefing up the police (53 per cent), doing better mental-health screening (50 per cent) and cracking down on violent video games (47 per cent). After mass shootings, gun purchases soar as potential gun buyers decide to act before the law changes to stop them. After last summer’s slaughter (12 dead, 58 wounded) at a cinema complex in Aurora, Colorado, the state saw a 41 per cent rise in firearms background checks from one weekend to the next.

The anti-gun lobby is as well organised as the pro-gun lobby, even if it is not quite so big. It will not need much thinking or study to produce a programme of legislation. A likely purpose of the Biden “task force” will be to plot political strategy and to protect the president against accusations that he is exploiting a tragedy to pass the wish list of his political allies.

One unusual factor, though, is working in favour of fresh gun laws: never has there been a mass killing this far from the next congressional election. Representatives casting votes now will have 22 or 23 months to make gun owners forget. Any legislation they get through will probably be limited, partisan and resented. The alternative is no legislation at all.

请根据你所读到的文章内容，完成以下自测题目：

1."There is no guarantee the outrage over Newtown will spur them to action···"

Who is them?

A. Schools and universities.

B. Elected officials.

C. Pro-gun organizations.

D. National media.

答案(1)

2.What about President Obama?

A. He doesn't like guns.

B. He likes the disgruntled workers who favor guns.

C. He paints himself as a gun-enthusiast.

D. He believes that being friendly to guns is killing Democrats.

答案(2)

3.Which of the following can support this argument:

It is voters, not the NRA, who are intimidating Democrats.

A. Even immediately after the Connecticut shootings, gun control is among the least appealing.

B. Democrats chose a gun-friendly Senate leader Harry Reid.

C. After Clinton signed his ban on assault weapons, his party lost congressional majority.

D. All of above.

答案(3)

4.What can we learn from this article, about US society and politics?

A. US government regulates foei gras, tobacco and office humour.

B. "Liberal on guns" means "pro-gun".

C. You can buy guns without being background-checked in Colorado.

D. US Representatives are being elected every 4 years.

答案(4)

* * *

(1) 答案：B.Elected officials.

解释：文章开头，控枪团体人士认为：这个级别的惨案，是民选官员们无法忽视的。但是在第二段中，作者说，Elected officials have proved quite capable of ignoring Cho’s rampage··.因为反对控枪甚至禁枪的是美国的选民，所以，人们不能保证这一次能通过什么重要的立法。

(2) 答案：A.He doesn't like guns.

解释：A是正确的。奥巴马本人是不喜欢枪，并希望控枪的，甚至公开抱怨过热爱枪支和宗教的工人。但是，民主党的高参们早就敏锐地发现，对枪有敌意的话会让选民抛弃民主党，于是奥巴马在这个问题上一直低调地将自己描述为a defender of the second amendment.

(3) 答案：D.All of above.

解释：ABC都是正确答案。正反两方面的经验教训让民主党不愿控枪，而且越来越不愿。

(4) 答案：A.US government regulates foei gras, tobacco and office humour.

解释：A是正确答案。美国政府对枪支的管控还不如对鹅肝酱（不符合健康饮食）、烟草，和办公室幽默（不能有歧视色彩或性骚扰）的力度大。 BC与事实相反，liberal在美国的语境下常不是字面意思，它往往与倾向民主党、倾向政府干预是同义词，其反义词conservative才是pro-gun的。

在科罗拉多州枪击惨案发生后，购枪者背景调查数猛增，这说明这个经常出现在西部片中的州也有背景调查要求，有犯罪前科和精神疾病的人不能随便买枪。“众议员们有22到23个月的时间让人来淡忘他们的所为”，也就是说众议员每两年改选一次，下一次是2014的“中期选举”。