美国枪击案：今年第355起

 　　Americans were exposed to the terror of mass gun violence again on Wednesday, this time at a social services center in San Bernardino, California. The initial reports revealed a distressingly¹ familiar pattern: A heavily armed active shooter or shooters, at least 14 people dead and more injured, harrowing images of law enforcement and first responders rushing to get the area under control, and stunned² people -- some of them wounded and bleeding -- streaming out of the facility.

　　周三，美国再次遭受大规模枪支暴力，地点位于加州圣伯纳迪诺社会服务中心。最初的报告揭示了一个熟悉的悲惨模式：一个或几个武装枪手，至少14人死伤，悲惨的执法画面，首批应对人员控制局面，惊愕的人群——其中有人受伤流血——涌出该建筑。

　　It seems like we've seen this time and time again. But mass shootings occur even more frequently than many people realize, because most of them don't make the national news.

　　我们好像对这个场景见过许多次了。但大规模枪击案发生的比人们所知的更为频繁，因为多数枪击案不会成为全国新闻。

　　美国枪击案：今年第355起

　　Over on Reddit, the Guns Are Cool community has compiled a list of every US mass shooting this year. According to their count, Wednesday's burst of violence was the 355th this year.

　　Reddit网“枪酷”栏目统计了今年发生的枪击案。据统计，周三暴力案件是今年第355起。

　　The moderators of the subreddit -- which is not actually of the belief that guns are cool -- use a broad definition of mass shooting, listing every event in which "four or more people [including the shooter] are shot in a spree." Under this definition, a shooting that wounds at least four people, but doesn't kill them, is still a mass shooting. That means the mass shooting in San Bernardino wasn't even the first one on Wednesday -- one woman was killed and three people were injured in an early morning shooting in Savannah, Georgia.

　　该版版主——他并不相信枪真的很酷——给大型枪击案做了一个宽泛的定义，“四人及四人以上（包括枪手）中枪”的枪击事件。根据这一定义，枪击导致至少四人受伤未危及生命也算是大规模枪击案。这就意味着发生在加州圣贝纳迪诺的案件并非周三唯一一起——当天早晨，佐治亚州萨凡纳市一名妇女遭枪杀，三人受伤。

　　The number and frequency of mass shootings in the US has become an increasingly heated point of debate over the past few years. The FBI doesn't have an official definition of mass shooting, and there are disagreements over how to count the incidents.

　　过去几年，大规模枪击案的发生频率和伤亡人数日益成为讨论的焦点。联邦调查局（FBI）对大规模枪击案没有官方定义。事件的统计方法也有争议。

　　Mother Jones, for example, uses a much narrower definition of of this form of gun violence. In its "Guide to Mass Shootings in America," the publication defines a mass shooting as a single episode carried out by a single shooter in a single location, usually a public place, that kills at least four people. Mother Jones also excludes most crimes that are primarily related to gang activity, armed robbery or domestic violence. Using this definition, there have been 72 mass shootings since 1982, the most recent at Umpqua Community College, in Roseburg, Oregon, in October.

　　例如，琼斯妈妈对此类枪支暴力的定义就具体很多。在《美国群众枪击事件指南》将群众枪击事件定义为“由一名枪手在同一地点（一般为公共场合）至少枪杀四人的事件”。琼斯妈妈还把帮派活动、持枪抢劫或家庭暴力等多数犯罪排除在外。根据此定义，自1982年以来共发生72起大规模枪击案。最近的一次是10月份发生在俄勒冈州的乌姆普夸社区大学。

　　Vocabulary

　　harrowing: 痛心的；悲惨的

1 distressingly   

adv. 令人苦恼地；悲惨地

参考例句：

• He died distressingly by the sword. 他惨死于剑下。
• At the moment, the world's pandemic-alert system is distressingly secretive. 出于对全人类根本利益的考虑，印尼政府宣布将禽流感病毒的基因数据向所有人开放。

2 stunned   

adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• The fall stunned me for a moment. 那一下摔得我昏迷了片刻。
• The leaders of the Kopper Company were then stunned speechless. 科伯公司的领导们当时被惊得目瞪口呆。