“As violence in movies increases, so do crime rates in our cities. To combat this problem we must establish a board
to censor certain movies, or we must limit admission to persons over 21 years of age. Apparently our legislators are
not concerned about this issue since a bill calling for such actions recently failed to receive a majority vote.”
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Appreciate all the feedback.
The argument claims that violent movies is related to the increase in violence in cities. Stated in this way the argument fails to mention several key factors, on the basis of which it could be evaluated. The conclusion relies on assumptions, for which there is no clear evidence. Therefore, the argument is rather weak, unconvincing, and has several flaws.
First, the argument readily assumes that the most important factor of the increase violence rates in cities are violent movies. This statement is a stretch and not substantiated in any way. There are some others factors that can influence that rate as poverty, access to education, video games, gun access, and others. The argument could be have been much clearer if it explicitly shows percentages or statistics about which factors have more positive correlation with violence increase rates in cities.
Second, the argument claims that limit admission to people who are over 21 years to violent movies could be a solution to decrease rates of violence. From this statement again, it is not all clear how that could be a solution, and how could be implemented to guaranty the results. If the argument had provided evidence of how this policy has worked in another similar city would have been a lot more convincing.
Finally, the author assumes that legislators are not interested in fight against violence in cities because they do not approve censor and limit admission to movies. This is again a very weak and unsupported claim because the argument does not talk about another policies that legislators are working on to reduce violence. As a result, this conclusion has no legs to stand on.
In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author clearly mentioned all the relevant facts as examples from other cities and more statistics about the most important factor in violence increase.