By referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as "purely programmatic" (line 49) in nature, the author mo...

Ross-Rinehart on August 19, 2021

The argument concludes that the hunting ban on deer "created a danger to public safety that would not otherwise exist." The danger, according to the premises, is the havoc caused by the deer population, which expanded 6x following the hunting ban.

The important thing to focus on is that the argument claims the danger "would not otherwise exist" if it had not been for the ban. In other words, the argument assumes that the ban was the *direct and sole* cause of the expanded deer population. This is a sketchy claim at best. There could be many reasons why the deer population expanded (and the public was consequently endangered), other than the hunting ban. Maybe a predator of the deer went extinct. Maybe environmental efforts protected breeding grounds for the deer, or led to more forestation for the deer to feed on.

Now that we have the argument's weakness identified, we can look for the answer choice that helps fix that weakness. Answer choice A does just that — it shows that there hasn't been a deer increase in counties that didn't enact a hunting ban. If, for instance, a predator of the deer went extinct, we'd expect the population of deer to expand *everywhere*, not just places where the hunting ban was enacted.

More generally — and the point of the above video — is that instances of "no cause, no effect" will generally strengthen cause-and-effect claims that a conclusion makes. If a conclusion claims X (in this case, a hunting ban) caused Y (in this case, a six-fold population increase in deer) on a Strengthen question, an answer choice that says that the absence of X is accompanied by the absence of Y (in this case, an absence of a ban has accompanied an absence of a population increase in deer), will be correct.