Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.

Paragraph: After a spate of mass shootings in early August 2019 in the United States, gun violence once again became a major topic of political debate in the country, and many expressed their views on potential solutions to the problem. The left-leaning Facebook page Occupy Democrats suggested that tighter gun-ownership regulations could help to reduce levels of firearms-related fatalities. On Aug. 7, the page posted a meme that claimed: “In Massachusetts, to buy a gun you have to take a four-hour gun safety course, get character references from two people, and have a one-on-one interview with a police officer. Oh, and it has the lowest gun death rate in America. Let’s do this everywhere.”    We received inquiries from readers about the accuracy of that two-part claim. On the whole, the Occupy Democrats meme had a high degree of accuracy. Elements of the meme appeared to have been copied from a Facebook post earlier on Aug. 7 by U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass. The meme itself was accompanied by text that read:  “‘Adjusted for age and population, the gun fatality rate in Massachusetts for 2016 was the lowest in the U.S. And that’s how it’s been for most of the last 30 years, although sometimes another state, like Hawaii, which also has very strict gun laws, ends up with a slightly lower rate. '” That text is actually a quotation taken from a May 6, 2018, article published by the Huffington Post, which went on to provide the following disclaimer: “Just how much that low rate has to do with the state’s gun laws is a matter of ongoing debate, even among experts. Pretty much any legitimate study is going to rely on assumptions that will be open to valid criticism; separating out cause and effect can be virtually impossible. But the available research provides a good reason to think Massachusetts laws in general and the permit system in particular have made violence less likely.” This fact check won’t attempt to rule on the validity of any claim that relatively strict gun regulations in Massachusetts are the primary or exclusive cause of that state’s purportedly low rate of firearms-related deaths, merely whether both factors are present there. Massachusetts state law certainly contains comparatively stringent requirements for obtaining and renewing firearms licenses, as well as purchasing and carrying firearms, and the claims made in the Occupy Democrats meme were largely accurate. In Massachusetts, anyone who wishes to purchase or carry a firearm must obtain a firearms license, of which there are two kinds: a license to carry and a firearms identification card (FID), the latter of which relates to rifles and shotguns. Applications for firearms licenses are processed by local police forces, and a 2014 state law gave law-enforcement agencies relatively wide authority and discretion to deny license applications, through a court process, where a license applicant poses a demonstrable risk to public safety. All first-time applicants for a license to carry or an FID must complete a one-day MA Certified Firearms Safety Course or a Basic Hunter Education Course, as part of the application. So the meme’s claim is accurate as regards first-time license applicants, but not for those who already have one, who are not required to undergo training every time they wish to purchase a new gun, for example. Furthermore, all applicants (whether first-time applicants or those applying to renew their firearms license) must provide two character references, as outlined in the state-issued “LTC/FID/Machine gun application,” which can be viewed here. The meme is accurate in this regard. Finally, Massachusetts state law does not oblige a “licensing authority” (typically a police force) to require an in-person interview with license applicants, but many police forces, including the largest in the state, Boston’s, do require such an interview. So that obligation is not prescribed in law, but is a practical necessity for many firearms-license applicants, which partially vindicates the meme’s claim in this regard. This was true in 2016, as the Huffington Post article (which Occupy Democrats indirectly cited as its source) outlined, though not quite accurate in 2017. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks gun deaths (along with many other cause of death) in each state every year. The CDC also calculates gun death rates in each state every year — that is, the number of firearms-related deaths per 100,000 people living in the state, after taking into account and standardizing age distributions across states. In its standard measure of gun deaths, the CDC counts all forms of firearms fatalities including homicides, suicides and accidental discharges. In 2016, Massachusetts had the lowest age-adjusted gun death rate in the country, with 3.4 fatalities per 100,000 people. Rhode Island, New York, Hawaii and Connecticut had the next-lowest death rates, while Alaska, Alabama and Louisiana had the highest rates of gun deaths in the U.S., with 23.3, 21.5 and 21.3 fatalities per 100,000 people, respectively:  Along with New York, Massachusetts had the joint second-lowest gun death rate in 2017, with 3.7 per 100,000 people, behind Hawaii, which had 2.5 such fatalities per 100,000 people:  As the Huffington Post article pointed out, Massachusetts regularly has among the lowest annual rates of gun deaths in the United States. As well as in 2016, it also had the lowest rate in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2009, 2012 and 2015,  The chart below shows the age-adjusted gun death rate of every state, taking into account all gun deaths between 1999 and 2017. Massachusetts had the second-lowest gun death rate over that 19-year period, behind Hawaii. Louisiana, Alaska, the District of Columbia and Mississippi had the highest:  Although the Occupy Democrats Facebook post clearly specified that the basis of the claim in the meme were the figures for 2016, a year in which Massachusetts did indeed have the lowest gun death rate in the country, the meme itself did not make that clear. Taken on its face, the meme was claiming that Massachusetts had the lowest rate of gun deaths in either 2019 (the year in which it was posted) or 2018 (the most recent full year). The state may well ultimately be shown to have the lowest rate of gun deaths in the country during those years, but CDC data for 2019 and 2018 will not be available until 2021 and 2020, respectively. On the whole, the Occupy Democrats meme was highly accurate, though not perfectly so. Claim: Massachusetts has certain strict gun-ownership requirements and the lowest rate of gun deaths in the United States. 
What's true: Massachusetts requires gun-license applicants to provide character references; first-time applicants must complete a one-day safety training course; and many police departments require an in-person interview before approving license applications. Massachusetts regularly has either the lowest or second-lowest rate of gun deaths in the United States. What's false: In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, Massachusetts had the second-lowest rate of gun deaths, but data for 2018 and 2019 are not yet available. The gun-license requirements set out in the meme do not necessarily apply to all applicants.

Paragraph: "As a matter of course, stories about the increased use of drugs should report the drugs’ prices. A change in guidelines based on the study would increase the number of patients eligible for treatment by several hundred thousand in the US. The annualized cost of drug treatment is $12,000-$24,000 depending on the regimen, leading to potential new expenditures of $24 to $48 billion. While there are significant offsets, the potential for this level of additional costs should have been included in the story The story states that delaying treatment ""nearly doubles the risk of dying over the next several years"" and yields a ""70 percent improvement in survival."" This reporting is vague. The story should have compared absolute risks, not relative risks. See our primer on this issue. The story should have included the time span studied. These numbers should have stated the two death rates directly so readers can understand the magnitude of the benefit–whether the risk of death went from [say] 2 percent to 1 percent or from 30 percent to 15 percent. The story places the recommended treatment of earlier drug intervention in the context of the treatments’ known side effects, which can be very serious. The story should have described the severity of those side effects. We give this a satisfactory score, but barely. The report is based on a study presented at a major medical meeting. The story should have mentioned the fact that it has not been published or peer-reviewed. It should also have pointed out that it was a retrospective cohort study, which is considered to be less conclusive than prospective, double-blind studies. It should also have pointed out, as the NIH press release does, that a clinical trial is needed to validate the results in a way that would call for changing the current guidelines. These failures to provide caveats and context earn the story an ""unsatisfactory"" rating under this criterion. The story does not exaggerate the gravity or prevalance of AIDS. The story quotes Anthony Fauci, one of the best-known and -respected experts in the field of HIV/AIDS. The story also quotes the study’s lead investigator, and the author of AIDS treatment guidelines. That source’s link to companies that make AIDS drugs is properly noted. The story also quotes an independent clinician familiar with the guidelines and the current research. The story plainly compares the current guidelines with the regimen tested. The story explains that the drug combinations used by AIDS patients have been widely used since the mid-1990s. No claims are made for the novelty of the drug treatment. The recommendation to treat earlier is presented not as novel, but as a plan under consideration and study for quite some time. The story does not draw excessively on the NIH press release." Claim: AIDS treatment should be started sooner, study says
"This is a Columbus Dispatch version of a story reported by the Associated Press. Since the Columbus paper changed the original article substantially, we send our comments to the Columbus paper. Taking the big view, this story about the benefits of starting the standard multi-drug AIDS treatment sooner than current guidelines suggest accomplishes its mission. It fairly describes important new research that verifies earlier work suggesting the same thing. It says, correctly, that the continuing research could drive changes in treatment. The story is well-sourced and provides a lucid description of the disease process and detailed definition of ""early"" treatment. Having said that, the report falls short of two key best practices:  It fails to quantify the benefits of early treatment in a meaningful way. It uses ""relative risk"" [a percent reduction in mortality] instead of ""absolute risk"" [which would allow readers to understand the gravity of the risk and the size of the benefit. It fails to describe the limitations of the study with caveats and context. If the story had mentioned those limitations, its predictions of imminent clinical use and eventual changes to the guidelines would have been properly tempered. As presented, the story fails to check the sources’ consistent enthusiasm with journalistic disinterest. Given the credibility of the study, the opinions of multiple high-quality sources and the previous research record, the predictions seem justifiable. But the history of AIDS science, treatment and politics recommends a bit more reporting distance and care."

Paragraph: The FDA said it was still evaluating the data on Glaxo’s Ziagen and Bristol-Myers’ Videx, and that the review “may result in the need to revise labeling for the products.”    “Until this evaluation is complete, health-care providers should evaluate the potential risks and benefits” of each HIV drug their patients are taking, the FDA said in a notice on its Web site. Glaxo and Bristol-Myers said their own evaluations had not found that the drugs raised the chances of a heart attack. The concern arose from a study of more than 33,000 patients called the D:A:D Study, which is examining the short- and long- term effects of various HIV drugs. Researchers examined heart attack risk among patients taking certain medicines from the class of AIDS drugs known as nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, or NRTIs. Patients taking either Ziagen or Videx “had a greater chance of developing a heart attack than patients taking other medications,” the FDA said. The risk did not appear to increase over time and seemed reversible after the drugs were stopped, the agency said. “The effect was not seen six months after stopping the drugs,” the FDA said. The FDA said it currently believed analyses of the D:A:D study were incomplete and noted that researchers had not evaluated heart-attack risk when patients were taking two other NRTIs, Gilead Sciences Inc’s (GILD.O) Viread and Emtriva. Glaxo spokesman Marc Meachem said the data had been presented at a medical conference in February. Glaxo analyzed its own databases and “did not see any sign of an increased risk of heart attack” with Ziagen, he said. Ziagen, which is known generically as abacavir, had 2007 global sales of $218 million. The drug also is a component of Glaxo’s Trizivir, Epzicom and Kivexa AIDS drugs, which had more than $1 billion in combined 2007 sales. Bristol-Myers spokeswoman Sonia Choi said “we haven’t seen an increase of cardiovascular events in our studies of Videx or in our (company) safety database.”    Videx is sold generically and, therefore, is not one of the company’s top products. The drug’s generic name is didanosine. The FDA said the results from Glaxo and Bristol-Myers analyses were inconclusive. Bear Stearns analyst Mark Schoenebaum said in a research note he believed safety concerns with Ziagen “will drive increased switching to Gilead-based regimens.”    Viread is known generically as tenofovir, and Emtriva is known as emtricitabine. The FDA notice was issued as part of an effort to notify the public about early signs of potential safety concerns before officials have reached a final conclusion. Claim: U.S. reviewing safety of Glaxo, Bristol AIDS drugs.

U.S. health officials are reviewing the safety of AIDS drugs sold by GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L) and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY.N) after a study showed a higher heart-attack risk compared with other HIV medicines, the Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday.