A common meme claims advances in medical treatments drove gun death rates down. Like many memes, it fails testing. Take-aways Four major initiatives in emergency treatment have no consistent correlation with gun-homicide/gun-assault ratios The Claim and Its Problems With anything political, bad claims can range from irrelevant to irrational. In other cases, it comes from substandard research blindly echoed by activists. The latter is what we see at the intersection of gun play and medical treatment.