The old argument that a “well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny” has returned with a vengeance since the February school shooting in Parkland, Florida, has reignited the push for gun control legislation. “How many millions were shot and killed because they were unarmed?” Rep. Don Young at Alaska said at a debate shortly after the shooting. “Fifty million in Russia because their citizens were unarmed. How many Jews were put into the ovens because they were unarmed?” During a debate in the Florida Senate over an assault weapons ban, Sen. David Simmons made the inaccurate claim that “Adolf Hitler confiscated all the weapons—took all the weapons, had a registry of everybody,” before he murdered his political opponents. This week, Iowa Rep. Steve King posted a meme noting the Cuban heritage of Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez and attacking her for ignoring “the fact that your ancestors fled the island when the dictatorship turned Cuba into a prison camp, after removing all weapons from its citizens; hence their right to self defense.”

The shopworn notion that the Holocaust happened because Jews were unarmed—a favorite of people ranging from Ben Carson to Joe the Plumber—is both misleading and offensive. For one thing, it ignores the Jews who did participate in armed resistance, including the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the partisan fighters—efforts that, noble as they may have been, had little chance of stopping the slaughter carried out by a major industrialized military power. It’s also strange for King to use Fidel Castro as an example of how an armed citizenry prevents authoritarian government: The Cuban Revolution wasn’t exactly an exercise in Gandhian nonviolence.

In the modern world, there’s little evidence to suggest that widespread private gun ownership leads to more democratic societies. The top countries on Small Arms Survey’s ranking of civilian gun ownership (the most recent data is unfortunately from 2007) are a mixed bag politically. The United States leads by a mile—88.8 firearms per 100 people—followed by Yemen, with 54.8. I supposed you could argue that Yemen’s well-armed population overthrew an authoritarian leader in 2012, though the civil war and humanitarian catastrophe that have followed somewhat undermine the case.

Switzerland (45.7) and Finland (45.3) are in the top 10, but so is Saudi Arabia (35)—the world’s largest and most repressive absolute monarchy—and Iraq (34.2). Iraq had a well-established gun culture under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, which did not prevent him from carrying out acts of genocide and mass murder but did contribute to the chaos that ensued after he was overthrown by U.S. military power.

Relatively high rates of gun ownership did not help the failed uprising against the autocratic government of Bahrain (24.8) in 2011, prevent a string of military coups in Thailand (15.6), or prevent Venezuela’s (10.7) descent into authoritarianism and economic chaos.

It’s true that North Korea has virtually no guns in private hands, but the same is also true of South Korea and Japan. Ghana, one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most peaceful and democratic countries, has one of the world’s lowest rates of gun ownership.

The country that ranks dead last on Small Arms Survey’s list, Tunisia, not only overthrew its dictator in 2011—albeit with a crucial assist from the military—but is the only one of the Arab Spring countries that has remained relatively democratic and stable since then.

In short, the data shows no discernible correlation between a country’s rate of civilian firearm ownership and its politics. Countries with lots of guns include democracies and dictatorships, peaceful orderly societies and failed states. Ditto for countries with very few guns. It should not be a talking point in this debate.