実践ビジネス英語 ディクテーション (8/30, 31)

NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。

Lesson 10のテーマは、‘Safe Schools’（学校を侵入者から守る）でした。Vignetteでは、最近アメリカでは新学年の準備品に防弾リュックが含まれるという事実から、学校での銃乱射対策などが話題になりました（ごく最近、実際のニュースで映像を見たばかりでした）。

Talk the Talkでは、杉田先生は銃規制について、Heatherさんはそうした対策について幼い子供を持つ親の視点で語られています。

Safe Schools

（S: 杉田敏先生　H: Heather Howardさん）

S: Our current vignette talks about the threat of gun violence in U.S. schools.

So many students have been killed in the last 20 years since Columbine.

And things could get even worse without fundamental measures to change the present situation, but the United States seems incapable of firearms control or anything else to stem gun violence.

This is all deeply depressing.

H: It truly is.

I am grateful for many features of life in Japan, and the two I am most grateful for are (1) the national health service and (2) the very, very low rate of gun violence.

I am so glad that the emergency drills at my daughter’s school do not involve hiding from some intruder with a gun.

I agree with Ueda in the vignette; I have great difficulty understanding the American love affair with guns, especially when so many innocent lives have been lost.

Many, many memes have been created about this issue and one made a particular impression on me.

It basically said with heavy sarcasm, “Let us honor the noble sacrifice of all the children who’ve bravely died for your right to have a gun.”

I am fully in favor of extremely strict regulations on who can have a gun.

S: But even if strict gun control laws were enacted today, there are already so many guns in private hands.

People who are determined to commit mass murder would probably still be able to get their hands on firearms anyway.

H: Yes. I sometimes despair that America will ever be able to solve this problem.

We’ve let things get so bad there may be no way out.

S: Do you think teachers and other faculty members should carry guns to fight “bad guys with a gun”?

It seems to me that putting guns in more people’s hands will only result in more gun deaths.

H: I am utterly opposed to arming teachers and other faculty.

Not only could students be caught in the crossfire, as they say in the vignette, what if the police show up and mistake a teacher for the shooter?

What’s more, kids are kids and they often do really stupid things.

I can easily imagine some students saying, “Hey, let’s sneak a look at the teacher’s gun. Let’s hold it and see how heavy it is,” or “Hey, let’s play a joke on the teacher,” and try to take their gun away.

Guns go off in people’s homes all the time because kids pick them up because kids are playing with them.

The same thing could easily happen in schools.

S: What do you think of the mass shooting drills conducted at many schools?

I can understand the possible psychological trauma such drills may cause especially to younger school children.

H: I’m appalled when I think of how frightening how traumatic those drills could be for little children.

It reminds me of something that happened with my daughter a couple years ago.

We were playing around and she announced that she was gonna put me in jail.

So I picked up a hairbrush and pretended to be calling the police, joking back that, “No, I’m gonna put YOU in jail!”

Now, she had started this make-believe, but for some reason, she suddenly took me seriously and started to cry.

So, of course I immediately stopped and reassured her that “Of course, I wouldn’t do that, I was just joking,” etc.

I shudder to think how frightened she might be at school, away from home, pretending that someone is trying to kill her with a gun.

 お疲れ様でした。お読みくださり、ありがとうございます。