Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

"Since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., supporters and opponents of gun control have thrown out statistics to support their point of view. Here’s one that caught our eye, offered by liberal commentator Mark Shields on the Dec. 21, 2012, edition of the PBS NewsHour. Shields told host Judy Woodruff, ""You know, Judy, the reality is -- and it's a terrible reality -- since Robert Kennedy died in the Ambassador Hotel on June 4, 1968, more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history, from the Revolutionary through the Civil War, World War I, World War II, in those 43 years. ... I mean, guns are a problem. And I think they still have to be confronted."" Is the death toll that high? Let's examine each half of his comparison. Deaths from warfare  We found a comprehensive study of war-related deaths published by the Congressional Research Service on Feb. 26, 2010, and we supplemented that with data for deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan using the website icasualties.org. Where possible, we’ve used the broadest definition of ""death"" -- that is, all war-related deaths, not just those that occurred in combat. Here’s a summary of deaths by major conflict:  4,435 2,260 13,283 525,000 2,446 116,516 405,399 36,574 58,220 383 2,175 4,486 1,171,177 Another 362 deaths resulted from other conflicts since 1980, such as interventions in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Haiti, but the number is not large enough to make a difference. Gunfire deaths  The number of deaths from gunfire is a bit more complicated to total. Two Internet-accessible data sets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allow us to pin down the number of deaths from 1981 to 1998 and from 1999 to 2010. We’ve added FBI figures for 2011, and we offer a number for 1968 to 1980 using a conservative estimate of data we found in a graph in this 1994 paper published by the CDC. Here is a summary. The figures below refer to total deaths caused by firearms: We should note that these figures refer to all gun-fire related deaths -- not just homicides, but also suicides and accidental deaths. In 2011, about one-quarter of firearm-related deaths were homicides, according to FBI and CDC data. Using total firearm-related deaths makes the case against guns more dramatic than just using homicides alone. When we rated a previous Facebook post, we lowered an otherwise  claim because it said that ""nearly 100,000 people get shot every year."" We found that the number of gun deaths and non-fatal injuries added up to 104,852, but we concluded that the term ""get shot"" could suggest victims who got shot by someone else rather than by their own hand. We don’t see a similar problem with the way Shields’ comment was phrased -- namely, ""died from gunfire."" Our ruling Since Shields’ comparison was otherwise accurate, with about 1.4 million firearm deaths to 1.2 million in war."
"Since 1968, ""more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country's history."

"Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Pat Mullins kicked off the New Year attacking recent side effects of health care overhaul on Flexible Spending Accounts, which allow workers to pay medical expenses with pre-tax dollars. In an e-letter titled ""FSA at Work? Jim Webb Just Made It a Lot Less Useful,"" Mullins staples Virginia’s senior Senator to new provisions of the health care law that took effect Jan. 1. ""Desperate for tax dollars to pay for their $1 trillion health care takeover, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Jim Webb decided to pick the pockets of consumers who opted to take responsibility for their own health care costs and remove the ability of consumers to use FSA and HSA plans to pay for things like aspirin and other non-prescription health needs,"" Mullins wrote. He later reiterates the point, writing: ""Until this week, consumers could use their accounts to set aside pre-tax money for medical expenses. But thanks to Webb and other tax happy Democrats, over-the-counter drug purchases are now off limits to FSA and HSA accounts."" There’s plenty of confusion about health care reform, so we checked to see if his claim about over-the-counter drugs is correct. As a source, Mullins cited a news report from KSAT 12 out of San Antonio, Texas. The report says, ""Over-the-counter medications will no longer be reimbursable through a health care flexible spending account, or FSA, even if the account has a grace period. So, Dec. 31 is the last day to stock up on pain relievers, allergy tablets, antacids and more for people who want to use them to exhaust their use-it-or-lose-it FSA."" Not convinced San Antonio’s KSAT 12 is an end-all source for health care reform, we dug deeper. According to the Internal Revenue Service guidance on flexible spending accounts, a new provision ""as added by the Affordable Care Act, provides that...beginning after December 31, 2010, expenses incurred for a medicine or a drug shall be treated as a reimbursement for medical expenses only if such medicine or drug is a prescribed drug (determined without regard to whether such drug is available without a prescription) or is insulin."" In other words, you will no longer be able to use FSAs to pay for your aspirin, antacids and other over-the-counter drugs if they’re not prescribed by a physician. What about HSAs -- tax-advantaged health savings accounts? Pretty much the same. The IRS says that ""a distribution from an HSA...for a medicine or drug is a tax-free qualified medical expense only if (1) the medicine or drug requires a prescription, (2) is an over-the-counter medicine or drug and the individual obtains a prescription, or (3) is insulin."" Otherwise, those ""non-qualified expenses"" will be taxed at 20 percent rather than the current 10 percent for HSA plan participants. So, while the recently enacted portion of the health care law will not stop consumers from being able to buy over-the-counter drugs through their plans, it will require a prescription to do so. On that count, Mullins stays relatively safe by employing the phrase ""non-prescription health needs"" at the end of his claim. , those items like aspirin can still qualify for reimbursement with a prescription, but then they would not longer be ""non-prescription."" But the same phrase also presents a problem for Mullins because other ""non-prescription"" items such as medical supplies and first-aid items remain eligible for reimbursement without a prescription. ""Over-the-counter medications are treated differently than over-the-counter medical items like Band-Aids, which are covered without a prescription,"" said Michael Waxman of Save Flexible Spending Plans. If you’re wondering why these changes are taking place, the answer is likely money. ""I think [federal officials] were just looking for revenue raisers,"" Mike Thompson, a human resource services principal with the PwC recently told the Washington Post. As that story notes, employee contributions to FSAs are made on a pretax basis, reducing earnings and thus the amount workers pay in income tax. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, tightening up the tax break on over-the-counter purchases will generate an estimated $5 billion in federal revenues through 2019. And one last note: Webb, as Mullins said, did vote for the massive health care reform bill that limits the use of flexible spending accounts. Let’s look back. Mullins says health care law provisions that took effect Jan. 1 will ""remove the ability of consumers to use FSA and HSA plans to pay for things like aspirin and other non-prescription health needs."" It’s  that as of Jan. 1, FSA and HSA plans no longer offered reimbursements for over-the-counter drugs without a prescription. However, those same items could be covered with a prescription. Mullins misses a caveat by not noting that non-prescription items like crutches, bandages, and health supplies like diagnostic devices and blood sugar test kits remain covered. But his comments seem directed at drugs. We find his claim ."
New provisions of the health care law bar the use of flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts to pay for aspirin and other non-prescription health needs.

"As part of his campaign to become Missouri’s 56th governor, Chris Koster tweeted a statistic about something he has been working to accomplish during his time as attorney general: closing the tobacco loophole. In his tweet, Koster called upon the legislature to #FixTheLoophole, which he says will save Missourians $50 million. The so-called tobacco loophole is money the state hopes to get from five big tobacco companies if it takes a tougher line with smaller ones. We looked into whether $50 million is really on the line. Tobacco background We reached out to the Koster campaign to find out what closing the loophole entailed. We heard back from David Turner, a spokesman for the Missouri Democratic Party. Turner told us that the tobacco loophole arose in 1998 as part of a master settlement agreement between the attorneys general of 46 states, along with Washington, D.C., and five U.S. territories, and the five largest tobacco companies in the U.S. The states had sued the tobacco companies for selling cigarettes which they knew caused cancer, emphysema and other diseases. The attorneys general wanted to recover the cost of caring for those people. The settlement said that in exchange for dropping the lawsuits, the states would receive roughly $10 billion dollars a year, essentially indefinitely. The annual payment to Missouri is about $130 million. As part of the deal, Missouri passed a law that required all nonparticipating tobacco companies to pay into an escrow fund. This was done in part to ensure that small cigarette makers didn’t gain a market advantage because they would be able to sell cigarettes at reduced prices. But there was a catch. If a state failed to ""diligently enforce"" the requirement that small companies make escrow payments, and the big tobacco companies lost a set amount of market share as a result, that state would lose a portion of its tobacco settlement money. According to a state auditor, that’s exactly what happened. The big tobacco companies lost an 8 percent market share from 1997 to 2003. As a result, the companies sued Missouri and other states for violating the settlement. In 2013, an arbitration panel found that in Missouri, of the 432 million cigarettes sold by nonparticipating manufacturers in 2002, companies made escrow payments on only $102 million. The panel ruled against Missouri and five other states, meaning the Show-Me State had to pay back $70 million from its 2014 payment. In February, Koster negotiated an agreement with the tobacco companies to return $50 million to Missouri — on the condition the state tighten the rules on the smaller cigarette makers. Which brings us to the loophole. Under current Missouri law, the smaller companies can trim the amount they pay into the escrow fund. Missouri is the only state that has yet to take steps to prevent this. The loophole The way escrow payments are calculated, small tobacco companies can get most of the money they pay back if they restrict their sales to only a few states. In order to close the loophole — and return $50 million to Missouri — the legislature would have to pass Senate Bill 1096. The bill would require all nonparticipating manufacturers to either join the master settlement or be subject to modified escrow rules which prevent the companies from gaming the system to keep their escrow money. SB 1096 has supporters on both sides of the aisle, but it is not without its opponents. Small tobacco companies have been fighting different versions of the bill for more than a decade, calling it a tax on their products and a move on the part of big tobacco to earn more market share at their expense. SB 1096 has yet to pass either chamber of the General Assembly, and the consequences are already being felt. Because the bill failed to pass before April 15, Missouri can no longer receive the $50 million for 2016. In order to receive the money in 2017, the bill must be signed by Gov. Jay Nixon by June 3. Taxpayer impact The loophole is the source of Koster’s $50 million figure, but will recouping the loss actually save taxpayers money? It certainly has cost the state. In October, Nixon withheld $46.1 million of the state's budget, relying on the passage of SB 1096 to fill the gap. Turner said that money would have gone to the Mental Health Department and the Department of Social Services, among others. For these programs to be maintained at their initial levels, Turner explained, taxpayers would be forced to cover the money lost in the tobacco arbitration. Gaining the $50 million dollars would allow those programs to remain uncut without costing the taxpayers any additional money. All things being equal, if the bill passes, taxpayers would win no matter what the state does with the money. If it’s spent on services, citizens get the benefit of $50 million worth of services. If the state cuts spending and lowers taxes, they save money when they file their taxes in April. And that’s just in 2017. If the loophole isn’t closed, Missouri could lose additional money in the years to come. The big tobacco companies have begun arbitration concerning Missouri’s diligent enforcement of the escrow laws in 2004. If an arbitration panel were to find against Missouri again, the state could be forced to forfeit more money. If SB 1096 passes, the companies would not seek arbitration for any of the years 2004 to 2014, per Koster’s agreement. Our ruling Koster said that closing the tobacco loophole would save Missouri taxpayers $50 million. The tobacco settlement and the arbitration that followed is complicated, but ultimately, Koster did reach a settlement to return $50 million dollars to Missouri. If the legislature passes SB 1096 by June 3, that money would come to the state in 2017. If it doesn’t, the state could potentially be on the hook for even more. Any money the state received would be dollars that taxpayers would not have to provide. Taxpayers could get $50 million worth of services or $50 million in tax cuts. Either way, they come out ahead."

Closing the tobacco loophole would save Missouri taxpayers $50,000,000