#8 - During the 1980s the homicide rate in Britain rose by

[Dave Killoran]

I've posted a more complete explanation of this problem at the top of the thread. Thanks!

[lenihil]

Dear Powerscore,

Could you please help to check my thoughts? Thank you.

Premise: Prevalence of knives causes increasing homicide rate
Conclusion: Government allows the knives to be sold so it is the one to blame
Assumption: Government causes the prevalence of knives

(E) says:
1. If ordinary knives, then the prevalence of knives doesn't cause increasing homicide rate. (cause absent but the effect still present)
(Is this attacking the Premise?)
2. If weaponry knives, then the government doesn't cause the prevalence of knives

Thank you for your help.

[Adam Tyson]

That's pretty good, lenihil! If I was going to quibble at all with your analysis, it would be with #2. I would say that if weaponry knives, then the knives actually are not prevalent (they are not in the households where the homicides are occurring.) So the government didn't cause those knives to be prevalent in those homes. But like I said, that is just a quibble. Nice work!

[lenihil]

Dear Adam,

Thank you for your help!

[flowskiferda]

I got this right by eliminating all the other ones, but I'm struggling to see why the first part of E) would weaken the argument. The fact that these ordinary household knives were common before the increase would not absolve the government of blame, because the government still allowed these potentially lethal knives in the first place.

[Adam Tyson]

What you're missing in that analysis, flowskiferda, is that we aren't just looking at some steady number of murders occurring. We are looking at an INCREASE in the number of murders. If ordinary knives are being used, the type that were always around in the kitchen for cutting meat and spreading butter, then government permissiveness might be responsible for some murders, but this still wouldn't make the government responsible for the increase in murders. There must be something else, other than permissive government policies, that contributed to the rise in the homicide rate.

The author wants to blame the government for the increase in the homicide rate, but if the knives were always available then the increase has to be due to some other cause. That's why that first part weakens the argument!

[Morgan2cats]

Hi PowerScore,

I have read all the replies under this question but I still don't get why " if the "potentially lethal knife" is a more exotic piece of weaponry, then most people do not have those in their house". Is it because it's unpremeditated assults, such lethal weapons wouldn't be generally avilable in households?

Could you please explain this for me? Thanks a lot!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Morgan,

One important thing to realize is that this question is classified as a Weaken question rather than a Flaw question. I specifically mention this because the wording in the question stem sort of looks like a Flaw question, specifically the word "criticism" is often used in Flaw questions, such as "the argument is vulnerable to which of the following criticisms."

This distinction is especially important here, because with Weaken questions, we accept each answer as true. As Adam pointed out an earlier post (Post #8), usually the LSAT will include the words "if true" in the question stem for Weaken questions to clarify this point. However, this question was from an earlier LSAT (1992), and the test makers used to be a little bit lax in the rules from time to time back in the old days.

For Answer E, the answer is stating as a fact that ordinary household knives (kitchen knives, etc.) were common before the homicide increase and weaponry/combat knives (daggers, etc.) were not common in households during the homicide increase. Accepting this as true, this would weaken the argument.

The conditional nature of Answer E can be a bit tricky, but basically the answer is providing a fact that rebuts the argument for each possibility of what type of knives are responsible for the homicides. If they were ordinary household knives, then the fact that those knives were common before the increase in homicides rebuts the argument. If they were weaponry/combat knives, then the fact that those types of knives are not common in households rebuts the argument.