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.

[EX Q]: 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. 
[EX A]: 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.

[EX Q]: Paragraph: If, as the former correctional officer fears, the virus spreads to hundreds of people, Griffin is headed to the woods. “I’ll do what the English royalty did to survive the bubonic plague,” Griffin said, referring to King Charles II’s flight to the countryside during the Great Plague of London in 1665-66. “I’m going into the country.”   Griffin, 27, of Huntsville, Texas, is among a growing if loosely-defined segment of Americans, known as “preppers,” who plan, train and stockpile in preparation for a natural calamity or societal breakdown. For many, the three cases of Ebola diagnosed in the United States so far since late September represent a new potential disaster and a reason to run to the store. Preppers are at the extreme edge of concern over Ebola, which has led to a series of false alarms driven by fear. Government efforts to stop the virus spreading from the three worst-hit West African countries, where more than 4,500 have died, include some travel restrictions and enhanced screening at airports. Chad Huddleston, an anthropologist at the University of Southern Illinois at Edwardsville, who studies preppers and estimates their numbers in the United States in the low hundreds of thousands, said those he has talked to are more concerned with undue public fear than with contracting Ebola. The virus was diagnosed in a Liberian visitor who was infected in his home country and two nurses who treated him at a Dallas, Texas hospital when he was dying and at his most contagious. Both nurses have been moved out of the state for treatment in hospitals equipped to treat Ebola patients. U.S. preppers have their roots in Cold War-era civil defense programs, said Vincent DeNiro, editor of Prepper & Shooter magazine. The movement’s profile rose thanks in part to the National Geographic Channel TV show “Doomsday Preppers,” and includes strains as disparate as off-grid homesteaders in the Great Plains, wilderness experts in the Mountain West and suburbanites across the country with caches of food and guns. For many of them, gearing up for Ebola has meant fortifying their stocks of freeze-dried food, water, filtration devices and hazardous material, or hazmat, suits, which experts say can be useless if not taken off properly. Some are also honing plans to meet teams of fellow survivalists at prearranged locations, or, like Griffin, who has no spouse or children, preparing to go it alone in the wilderness. Stockpiling has led to shortages of a range of survival gear, from food with a shelf-life in excess of 20 years to impermeable medical suits, according to vendors. At Cheaper Than Dirt, a leading online survivalist retailer based in Texas, dozens of varieties of freeze-dried meals are out of stock, from packets of cheesy lasagna to 60-serving buckets of mushroom stroganoff. Supplies such as hazmat suits and protective gloves - sometimes called Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) gear - are running low, said Richard Smith, general manager of The Survival Center, an online retailer in Washington state, about 1,500 miles from Texas. Smith boasted of snagging last week the final wholesale personal protection suits and respirator masks to be had on the West Coast. Using hazmat gear without proper training is of limited benefit, said magazine editor DeNiro, who has encouraged his readers to stock up on at least six months of food. “Buying NBC equipment and not learning how to use it properly is like buying a gun and ammunition and never practicing with it,” he said. Many preppers, who have focused their planning on everything from solar storms and earthquakes to nuclear holocaust, are skeptical of government - a view that dovetails with concerns, voiced by lawmakers and medical experts, that U.S. authorities mishandled the response to the virus when it emerged at a Texas hospital. At a prepper and self-defense school in south Florida, fear over Ebola has meant a rush of students, about 54 in the past two weeks, to take a primer course on how to avoid contracting the virus, said David D’Eugenio, founder of the HomeSafety Academy in Lake Park. “For the past week, I can’t even tell you what our hours are like with all the people coming through,” he said. An avid prepper and retired firefighter in West Palm Beach, Florida, Bob Boike, who attends D’Eugenio’s school, believes that an Ebola outbreak in the United States will likely be averted, but he is taking no chances. Boike, 58, who co-leads of a team of 32 preppers and their families, with multiple secret locations provisioned to last them a year or more, has stocked up on water and canned food, having already socked away an ample supply of masks, gloves and other medical supplies, he said. “This is our insurance for if and when there is societal breakdown,” Boike said. Claim: Ebola gives U.S. 'preppers' another reason to prepare for worst.
[EX A]: With the closest known U.S. cases of Ebola diagnosed about 160 miles away in Dallas, Cary Griffin is taking no chances.

[EX Q]: Paragraph: The Indiana State Department of Health said Thursday that chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are of particular concern in the state. Indiana has nearly 31,000 cases of chlamydia, 9,500 cases of gonorrhea and 800 cases of primary and secondary syphilis reported in 2016. State Health Commissioner Kris Box warns that STDs could cause serious health problems, including brain and nervous system damage, infertility and babies born prematurely. People with such diseases also are more likely to transmit HIV. Most STDs can be treated but are hard to find out as they often have no symptoms. Box urges anyone who is sexually active to get tested annually. Claim: Indiana health agency urges residents to get tested for STDs.
[EX A]:
State health officials are urging Indiana residents to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases as the nation marks STD Awareness Month during April.