President Obama's recent gun-related claims have come under fire by factcheckers, with the Washington Post specifically giving him three-of-four "Pinocchios" for saying U.S. homicide rates exceed those of other industrial nations by a wide margin.
Obama's comment in South Carolina, last week: "What we have to recognize is, is that our homicide rates are so much higher than other industrial countries. I mean, by like a mile."
The takeaway message to the Benedict College town hall attendees was that the United States had the highest homicide rate in the industrialized world, Fox News reported. But that message is far from true.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that the average homicide rate for the world's 36 industrialized countries comes in at 4.1 per 100,000 people – and that Brazil tops the list, with a rate of 25.5.
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The United States, meanwhile, comes in at fourth, with a rate of 5.2. Tied with the United States is Chile.
Obama also claimed "there are neighborhoods where it's easier for you to buy a handgun and clips than it is for you to buy a fresh vegetable," Fox News reported.
The Washington Post took Obama to task for the remark.
"This is just a very strange comment that appears to have no statistical basis," the newspaper wrote.
And one more statement to the students the Washington Post found curious: Obama told the crowd he was not "exaggerating" that lawmakers were supporting policies to let firearms in kindergarten and machine guns in bars, Fox News said.
His actual statement: "People just say well, we should have firearms in kindergarten and we should have machine guns in bars. You think I'm exaggerating. I mean, you look at some of these laws that come up."
As the newspaper pointed out, no state allows machine guns to be carted into bars – and all the political ponderings about allowing guns in schools have focused mostly on college campuses. None of the proposals brought forward by lawmakers specifically speak to kindergarten, the newspaper corrected.