Obama Says 'You Think I'm Exaggerating' on Guns. Fact Checker Says…

President Barack Obama told a college crowd last week he wasn't "exaggerating" when it comes to some of the proposals the pro-gun crowd has thrown around.

The Washington Post's fact checker begs to differ.

Speaking during a town hall event at Benedict College on Friday, Obama asserted that in some places, it's easier to buy a gun than it is "to buy a book" or "a fresh vegetable."

President Barack Obama participates in a town-hall meeting at Benedict College, Friday, March 6, 2015, in Columbia, S.C.. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

“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,” Obama said.

Post Fact Checker columnist Glenn Kessler called the assertion “a very strange comment that appears to have no statistical basis.”

Obama also said during the town hall: “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.”

This is a stretch, according to the Post, citing Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which measures "industrialized countries" as having an average homicide rate of 4.1 per 100,000 people. While the United States is above the global average at 5.2 per 100,000, it is well behind Brazil's 25.5 or Mexico's 23.4. Still, Germany, France and the United Kingdome are below 1 per 100,000.

Obama also said at Benedict: “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.”

Because what he said was classified at mostly hyperbole and exaggerations — not outright lies — Obama earned just three out of four Pinocchios.

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