Logical Reasoning

PT18 · S2 · Q8 During the 1980s the homicide rate in Britain

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During the 1980s the homicide rate in Britain rose by 50 percent.

Conclusion

The govt's permissiveness that allows these knives to be sold is to be blamed for the homicide rate rising 50% in the 80s.

Evidence

Most of the homicides in this wave of murders were committed with a knife, and the result of an unpremeditated assault within the family. They probably wouldn't result in deaths if there weren't so many knives.

Evaluate

Since we have a statistical change and the author is positing / blaming a causal storyline, we can apply our Curious Fact / Explanation template.

Curious Fact: why did the homicide rate go up by 50% in the 1980s? Author's Story: the government allows knives to be purchased, and having a knife in the house turns an unpremeditated assault within the family into something fatal.

- Is there some OTHER WAY to explain the uptick in the homicide rate? - Is there some way to argue that knives really aren't a plausible culprit, or that the government isn't really the body that would be blamed?

Goal

Since the author is relying on an implicit comparison between the world where knives were legal in the 1980s and a hypothetical world where knives were not legal, the author is assuming that things would have gone differently w/o knives.

We can object by saying, .

8.

Which one of the following is the strongest criticism of the argument above?

  1. There are other means besides

    Too Weak

    This isn't a super strong objection: hey, author, if it hadn't been for knives, these (unpremeditated) crimes of passion that happened within a family would have happened anyway with guns or poison or other lethal methods. The phrase 'a person who intends to cause the death of another' makes the objection a little out of scope. Unpremeditated family violence is not one person intending to cause the death of another. It's someone reaching a breaking point and lashing out violently and often accidentally or regretfully causing the death of another. Not to mention, common sense tells us that the average household is more likely to have a knife than to have a gun or poison.

    17% picked this

  2. It is impossible to know

    Irrelevant

    We don't need to know the exact number of unpremeditated assaults. We know the reported number went up by 50% and this answer doesn't help us make any sort of objection that sounds like "don't blame knives ... had they been illegal, that wouldn't have changed much".

    1% picked this

  3. Knives are used in other

    Strengthens, if Anything

    Telling us that knives are used in other murders, too, is only helping the author's case that the government should have done something about knives.

    2% picked this

  4. The argument assumes without justification

    Not Assumed

    The author seems to be thinking the opposite of this. She's thinking that people buy legal knives and have them in their house (probably for cooking) and then use them when they're suddenly wanting to hurt someone in their family. Since she's targeting unpremeditated homicides, the idea that these knives were part of a deliberate plan goes squarely against the story we heard.

    23% picked this

  5. Correct

    If the potentially lethal knives

    Why this is right

    This hurts the plausibility of the author's causal story. If they're ordinary cooking/eating knives, then they existed prior to the homicide rate. (Cause, No Effect plausibility weakener) How could these knives be the causal difference-maker that explains the uptick in homicides in the 1980s if these knives weren't different? (i.e. people already had them in the 1970s) If they're knives designed as weapons, then you wouldn't find them in most houses (No Cause, Effect plausibility weakener). How could these weaponized knives be the causal difference-maker that explains all these unpremeditated family homicides if these knives weren't found within households? An unpremeditated assault means that it just happens, with whatever's nearby. If you leave the house to procure a weapon, it's not unpremeditated anymore.

    Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    57% picked this

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