Monday in Paris (of all places), Barack Obama declared after the murders in Colorado last week, “I say this every time we’ve got one of these mass shootings; this just doesn’t happen in other countries.” The Cato Institute’s David Kopel took a look at Obama’s claim and asks, “Is his statement true?” If he meant frequency, yes, but that’s not what he said. Kopel notes:

For example, on Nov. 20, 2015, mass shooters attacked a hotel in Mali, murdering at least 19 people.

Although President Obama has relatives in Kenya, his statement suggests a lack of awareness of events there. On April 2, 2015, criminals murdered 142 students at the University College Campus of Garissa, in northeastern Kenya. Among the other mass shootings in Kenya in recent years are those as Lamu (29 murdered, July 5-6, 2014), Mpeketoni (53 murdered, June 15-17, 2014), Majembeni and Poromoko (15 murdered, two days after Mpekoni) and the Westgate Mall in Nairobi (67 murdered, Sept. 21, 2013). Kenya, by the way, has extremely strict laws against the possession or carrying of firearms, as well as bows, as I detailed in a Quinnipiac Law Review article with Joanne Eisen and the late Paul Gallant.

On Saturday, Boko Haram attackers murdered four people in Nigeria, and four more in Niger. Last weekend, four Egyptian policemen were murdered in a drive-by shooting. As reported by CBS News the day before Thanksgiving, “Two massacres that killed 15 people in less than 12 hours rocked Honduras and left the country’s top cop in tears on Wednesday.”

Perhaps President Obama does not know about the above events or believes that for some reason that mass shootings in Africa, Asia or Latin America don’t “count.” This is a surprising perspective for someone who, in his autobiography, claims to have closely studied the works of radical anti-colonialist “Franz [sic] Fanon” and to have spent much time discussing “Eurocentrism” with his Columbia University friends.

Kopel lists off numerous other examples, but suffice to say Obama’s not worried about the truth of his claim, only the emotion. He just can’t resist making gun control an issue, no matter how many more guns are sold in response.