Certainly you have seen this meme circling the Internet. Switzerland and Honduras, roughly the same populations. One has universal gun ownership and little violent crime, the other has a total gun ban and the highest homicide rate in the world.
[1]
Politifact calls the claim false (naturally) — but their reason why? You gotta read this to believe it [2]:
Even though Honduras and Switzerland are No. 94 and No. 96 in the CIA’s list of countries by population, this metric alone is not enough reason to compare the effect of different gun control laws in either country.
There’s really no point in comparing the challenges of Honduras, a lower middle-income country in Central America beleaguered by corruption and violence from the drug trade and gangs, to Switzerland, an affluent country nestled in western Europe.
Short version? Politifact claims that even though Switzerland and Honduras have similar populations, because one is filled with white people and the other with Hispanics… Honduras is just *naturally* more violent than Switzerland.
Soft racism, anyone?
Of course, the point of all of this isn’t to discern truth from fiction, but rather cram facts into a hypothesis. Gun control is a positive good; gun ownership the ultimate evil. Therefore, this meme must be utterly incorrect so that smaller minds who don’t like thinking but prefer “all the feelz” simply flip a headline at folks while ignoring the implicit, disgusting, low, vile racism embedded in their argument.
Civil liberties are for everyone, regardless of ethnicity, race, creed, color, background, or ideology.
Break on that? You break America.
Bearing Drift gives this Politifact rating four out of five bullshits.
[3]
UPDATE: I am reminded of the following quote by H.L. Mencken: [4]
“The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.”
So it is with the fallacy that that Honduras isn’t Switzerland because of material prosperity… such a shameful argument to make.