Fox News host Shepard Smith agreed with President Barack Obama that mass shootings like the one Wednesday in San Bernardino, California, are more common in the U.S. than in other countries.
“[President Obama] got a lot of partisan pushback on that from his political opponents, but the fact of the matter is, among developed nations, that’s the truth,” Smith said, referencing the president’s statements on the topic when he was in Paris for the United Nations climate summit. “These sorts of mass shooting, with the regularity of where they occur in the United States — you don’t find that in other countries.”
“I can report to you with certainty that it happens more here than anywhere else in the world,” he said.
Smith was careful to limit his support for the president to the frequency of gun violence. “That’s not to say anything but that fact,” he continued. “You can extrapolate from that whatever you want.”
In the wake of the San Bernardino slaughter on Wednesday, Obama called for reform of U.S. gun safety laws in an interview with CBS News. During a previously scheduled interview with anchor Norah O’Donnell, the president again called for “common sense” gun laws and stricter background checks on gun purchases.
“We should never think that this is something that just happens in the ordinary course of events, because it doesn’t happen with the same frequency in other countries,” he said.