Q10 - Which one of the following

[eagerlawstudent]

I don't know why B is the best answer versus C. HELP!

[bbirdwell]

So what's the core of the argument?

Conclusion: Law should require explicit safety labels to indicate hazards.

Premise: Labels now have age range for which toy is intended. This has helped, but parents could prevent injuries almost entirely if labels provided explicit safety info.

Understanding the essential elements of an argument this way can really help.

Perhaps you can now see that (C) is completely out of scope. It doesn't help or hurt the reasoning of the argument. The notion of "3 years old" is just thrown in to illustrate what the current labels now do. It's not part of the reasoning.

(B) helps to strengthen the argument because it gives a potential reason why the other labels have failed, which in turn suggests why this label may work, because it's different in an important way. You see, the reasoning in the argument is sort of like "We tried X and it worked a little. If we do Y, which is a little different, it will really work." This choice gives us an explicit reason why X did not work, and it's a mistake that Y does not make (ie there won't be any confusion over what information the label is intended to impart).

[WaltGrace1983]

I'll add a bit to this.

The only labels currently required indicate just age range
(→)
Parents could prevent such injuries almost entirely if toy labels were more explicit
→
Toy-labeling law should require manufacturers to provide explicit safety labels

This argument is a bit tough to decipher the core because I think there are actually not one, but two conclusions happening here. The second "premise" - that parents could prevent... - seems more like an intermediate conclusion to me? Why? Well my thought process goes as follows: There seems to be a gap between P1 and P2. The gap is the question, "why isn't age range good enough?" I think that this is definitely something that needs to be addressed. Following this though we still get another gap, a gap between prevention and what we should do. Should we really try to prevent injuries? In the real world, absolutely. However, this is LSAT world and we need to throw our previous convictions out the window. Thus, there are two gaps in this argument and that often means that there are two conclusions: one intermediate and one acting as a holistic conclusion for the whole argument.
In addition, we could use the THEREFORE test to help strengthen my reasoning (no pun intended) that P2 is a conclusion to P1.

Since this is a strengthen question, and one that tells us why we SHOULD do something, we need to provide more reasoning why we should do something and perhaps more reason why the "age range" indicator isn't good enough. A strengthener could be that age range does NOT tell you everything you need to know about safety or perhaps that including explicit information will call parents attention better. Also, we could say that a strengthener would be that we SHOULD do something that is believed to help reduce injuries of children but I don't see that happening. That sounds more like a principal question anyway.

(A) We don't care about what people associate with certain types of toys. Also, this may give us a weak reason why we don't need to change anything. Why? Because some toys don't need a change anyway!

(B) This gets to the gap between P1 and P2. The gap would be that the current labels aren't working sufficiently and that we could do something better. This answer choice gives us reasoning that parents view the "current labels" as mere recommendations, thus if this is true, perhaps we could say that a new change would greatly favor the children.

(C) This is just giving validation to the example. This doesn't say why we SHOULD do something or why the current labels DON'T do what they should. This doesn't have much to do with labels at all actually.

(D) This initially looks good. Perhaps this provides reasoning for why the current labels are ineffective and thus a change is in order. In that case, it is very similar to (B). However, do note this: (D) is talking about manufacturers labels IN GENERAL. If they don't pay attention to current labels who is to say that they will pay attention to future labels? Thus, why should we change them? Many of them won't read the labels anyway! This seems like a strengthener - but it is actually a weakener.

(E) It doesn't matter that it is the most serious hazard. We are talking about safety labels in general. Safety labels could warn of choking or of the toy being flammable or what have you. This is out of scope.

(B) is the correct answer but I would like to make one more note of it after looking at (D). Notice how (B) talks about CURRENT labels: parents only believe this about CURRENT labels. This is different then how parents think about labels in GENERAL.