Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension                             (35 minutes)
Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C)and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.
Passage 1
The great bulk of expert opinion is that owing a gun undermines rather than increases safety: the function of discouraging burglars or other criminals is more than offset by other factors. First come the suicides: in 1986,18,153 people shot themselves to death. No one on knows how many might have lived if they had been unable to pick up a gun and how many might have merely chosen other means to end their lives. But surely the presence of a loaded gun in a bureau drawer must have tempted many, particular teens, to yield to a black depression that might have lifted had the means to carry out the dark wish not been so readily available.

Then come the accidental shootings, many by foolish guys who never bother to learn how to handle their weapons. More heartbreaking are the frequent incidents of children picking up their parents’ guns and finding out in the most disastrous way that they are not toys; for example, an eight-year-old boy who shot his six-year-old sister dead last week in Fairfax. Then there are the quarrels between spouses, between parents and their children, between neighbors and friends that suddenly turn fatal because one or both can pick up a gun. Police commonly estimate that if a household gun is ever used at all, it is six times as likely to be fired at a member of the family or a friend as at an intruder. (It is even more likely, says Dr. Carl Bell, a Chicago psychiatrist, that the gun will be stolen; gun are prime targets for burglars because they can be easily and profitably sold to other criminals.)And finally, in the relatively rare shoot-outs between householders and burglars that do occur, it might easily be the burglar who proves more skilled in handling his guns and the householder who winds up in morgue（停尸房）.

Adding all types of deaths together, Mercy and Houk, researchers from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control, point out that “during the last two years, the number of people who died of injuries inflicted by firearms in the United States exceeded the number of casualties during the entire 8.5-year Viet Nam conflict.” Mercy and Houk judged that “injury from firearms is a public-health problem whose toll is unacceptable.”

Another group of researchers presented evidence that lax U.S. gun laws might be to blame. The team, headed by emergency room surgeon John Henry Sloan, studied a pair of cities just 140 miles apart: Seattle and Vancouver. The two cities had similar unemployment rates, household incomes, law-enforcement policies and even favorite TV shows. Two differences: in Canada, handgun ownership is tightly restricted; in Washington State, guns are more easily purchased. And between 1980 and 1986 Seattle had 388 homicides, vs. 204 Vancouver.
21. According to most experts, possessing a gun ________.
A) can not guarantee your safety
B) does more than assure you safety
C) leads to more suicides
D) can only frighten thieves
22. “To carry out the dark wish” in the last sentence of the first paragraph means _________.
A) killing oneself
B) shooting others
C) yielding to depression
D) picking up a gun
23. Which of the following statements is NOT true?
A) Many children become the victims of playing guns
B) A household gun is more likely to aim at a familiar person
C) Accidental shootings often happen when people are quarrelling
D) A gun at home is very likely to be taken away by burglars
24. The word “lax” in the first sentence of the last paragraph most probably means________.
A) different
B) unrestricted
C) funny
D) not strict
25. The author cites the two cities as an example to demonstrate that ________.
A) what matters is to carry out the gun laws
B) all states must have the same gun laws
C) gun ownership must be strictly restricted
D) gun laws have little effect

2006年12月英語四六級考試最后沖刺專題

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