Washington Post Fact Checker: President earns three "Pinocchios" for latest anti-gun whoppers

President Barack Obama has been lying about guns and gun rights for years, and it finally seems as though at least one mainstream media outlet is catching on.

For the second year in a row, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker has given Obama “Three Pinocchios” for false claims in support of gun control.

In 2013, the newspaper "Pinocchio'd" the president for claiming that 40 percent of firearms are sold without a background check. Now, it exposes the untruthfullness of three claims the former Joyce Foundation Board of Directions member told students at Benedict College in Columbia, S.C. on March 6, 2015.

“What we also have to recognize is, is that our homicide rates are so much higher than other industrialized countries. I mean by like a mile. And most of that is attributable to the easy, ready availability of firearms, particularly handguns.”

“And as long as you can go into some neighborhoods and it is easier for you to buy a firearm than it is for you to buy a book, 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 — as long as that’s the case, we’re going to continue to see unnecessary violence.”

“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.”

After having been challenged by a reader and via a number of Tweets, the Washington Post's FactChecker decided to take a look at the statements. What they found, of course, was that the president was, as he has so often done before when it comes to guns and Second Amendment rights issues, lying through his teeth.

NO, the U.S.'s homicide rate aren't "so much higher...by like a mile."

...[T]he president said that U.S. rate was higher “by a mile” when in fact the rate is five times lower than Brazil and four times lower than Mexico.

NO, it's not “easier for you to buy a handgun and clips than it is for you to buy a fresh vegetable."

This is just a very strange comment that appears to have no statistical basis. Perhaps one can just shrug it off as hyperbole, but is this really something the president of the United States should say to college students? As far as we know, there are no areas in the United States where background checks are needed to buy vegetables.

NO, people aren't saying we "should have machine guns in bars,” and YES, it was an exaggeration.

The president was playing fast and loose with his language here—to a group of college students no less. There’s little excuse for the claim that in some neighborhoods, it is easier to buy a gun than vegetable (see update above) — or to say he’s “not exaggerating” when he claims that some people have proposed laws that would allow machine guns in bars.

As for the U.S. ranking on homicides among industrialized nations, the president certainly would have had a stronger case if he said the United States was above average, or that it was in the top ranks. But instead he claimed the United States had rates that were higher “by like a mile.”

The gun debate is serious enough that it should not be poisoned by exaggerated claims and faux statistics. The president earns Three Pinocchios.

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary, BFA PAC Vice Chairman, and an NRA-certified firearms instructor. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website.