Should a total ban be put on trapping wild animals? Arguments: 1. Yes.…

Concept: In Statement-and-Argument questions, an argument is STRONG only when it is directly relevant to the decision being asked AND addresses a substantial consideration that bears on the merits of that decision. An argument is WEAK when it is a superficial, tangential, or self-serving point that does not engage with the actual question, or when it targets a side-effect (cost, difficulty, profit) rather than the core issue itself.

Application:

• Argument 1 points to trappers' income. Whether an industry is profitable is a fact about the trappers, not about whether wild animal populations need protection — it does not engage with the environmental question at all, so it fails the relevance test for a strong argument.

• Argument 2 claims that bans are not effective. Enforcement difficulty is a separate practical issue from whether the underlying protective policy is justified; a hard-to-enforce law calls for better enforcement, not for abandoning the policy — so this too does not address the merits of the decision.

Cross-check against each option:

• Only 1 is true would need argument 1 to hold up on its own — but an income argument speaks for the trapping industry's interests, not for wildlife protection, so it doesn't.

• Only 2 is true would need argument 2 to hold up on its own — but a claim about weak enforcement argues for tighter enforcement, not for scrapping the ban, so it doesn't either.

• Either 1 or 2 is true would need at least one to survive scrutiny — since neither does, this option also fails.

Since protecting the natural environment is the substantive issue at stake and neither argument engages with it, neither argument is strong.