During the 1980s the homicide rate in Britain rose by 50 percent. The weapon used usually was a knife. Potentially l...

Naz March 3, 2015

Conclusion: the blame for this rise in homicide in the 1980s in Britain falls on the permissiveness of the government for allowing such lethal weapons to be sold.

Why? The weapon used usually was a knife and potentially lethal knives are sold openly and legally in many shops. And we know that most deaths occur as a result of unpremeditated assaults within the family.

We are looking for an answer choice that would weaken the argument.

Answer choice (E) does just that. It explains that if the potentially lethal knives were ordinary household knives, then they couldn't have led to the rise in homicide rates since they were common in homes before the 1980s when the rise in homicide rate occurred. And if these potentially lethal knives were weaponry, then these knives are not generally available in households, and this could not lead to the rising homicide rates since we are told that most of these homicides are unpremeditated, i.e. not thought out or planned, and done within the family, i.e. done within the household.

Therefore, if we take answer choice (E) to be true, then the argument would no longer stand since the rise in homicide rates would no longer necessarily be due to the government's permissiveness in allowing lethal weapons to be sold.

Hope that clears things up! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

cayley July 11, 2018

Please explain why A is wrong. It seems like an alternate cause

Christopher July 28, 2018

@cayley, (A) doesn't work because the passage specifically says that the weapon of choice was most commonly a knife.

odsimkins March 10, 2020

@christoper The conclusion is that the government is to blame for the homicides because it permissively sells knives. Wouldn't it weaken the argument that they government is to blame for the increased homicides because of the selling or knives if people are using weapons other than knives to commit homicide?

shunhe March 28, 2020

Hi @odsimkins,

Thanks for the question! We can’t really use (A) to weaken the argument like that in this instance. We’re told explicitly in the second sentence of the passage that the weapon used usually in these homicides was a knife, and anything premise provided in the passage, as far as we’re concerned, is gospel that we have to hold as true. We’re also told in the passage that if knives weren’t as prevalent, there’d probably be less homicides, and so this is also a fact in this stimulus. In addition, (A) is a very weak claim. (A) doesn’t even say that guns and poison or any of these alternate means are actually, as a matter of fact, used to accomplish homicide. All (A) tells us is that these means exist. Thus, it doesn’t give us enough of a link between these alternate causes and the actual acts of homicide anyway.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.