Black Lives Matter has been responsible for the lion’s share of destruction, violence, and mayhem this year and an independent research group now has the numbers to prove it.

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit organization with a focus on global conflict, collected data over the summer supported by Princeton University. As the Federalist’s Joy Pullman reported, ACLED found that of the hundreds of riots that occurred this year, 95 percent were found to have perpetrators that that had an affiliation with Black Lives Matter:

Of the 633 incidents coded as riots, 88 percent are recorded as involving Black Lives Matter activists. Data for 51 incidents lack information about the perpetrators’ identities. BLM activists were involved in 95 percent of the riots for which there is information about the perpetrators’ affiliation.

Early estimates from insurance agencies say the cost of this summer’s rioting will set a record surpassing that of the 1992 Rodney King riots, which cost an inflation-adjusted $1.2 billion. Much of that will be paid by taxpayers in the form of overtime and hazard pay for police and EMTs, emergency room visits, destruction of public property, and more. Of course, rioters are inflicting these costs during a time governments, and the people who fund them, have fewer resources due to coronavirus shutdowns and pent-up entitlement obligations.

So not only is Black Lives Matter central to the destruction you’ve seen this year, it’s also costing us, the taxpayer, an exorbitant amount of money to fix.

The riots occurred most in places such as Portland, Oregon, and New York City, but riots also occurred across the country including Kentucky, North Carolina, Colorado, and Texas. Pullman notes that 47 states have had riots occur in their cities this year.

Pullman noted the report does try to blame law enforcement on the escalation of criminal behavior on several occasions:

A report accompanying the data project, however, reads like an upscale attempt to blame the police for criminals’ decision to steal, kill, and destroy. Several times the report explicitly does so, such as here: “Although federal authorities were purportedly deployed to keep the peace, the move appears to have re-escalated tensions. Prior to the deployment, over 83% of demonstrations in Oregon were non-violent. Post-deployment, the percentage of violent demonstrations has risen from under 17% to over 42% (see graph below), suggesting that the federal response has only aggravated unrest.”

This is a logical fallacy called post hoc, ergo propter hoc: Because one thing happened after another, the first thing caused the second. It’s just plain false. In science, this error is described as the difference between correlation and causation. Social scientists ought to be aware of and refrain from employing it, yet these did not.

The cause of violence is not the police. It is not poverty. It is not one’s race. To say so is in fact a smear against poor people and people of the racial group identified. The cause of violence is the people who have chosen to be violent.

Pullman is correct here.

The choice to destroy is up to the destroyer. If these protests were the “peaceful” kind they’re promoted to be then there would be no “riot.” Police have shown up to other protests that retained their peacefulness and there was no police action that was needed because the protest retained its peacefulness.

The question to ask here is why Black Lives Matter is so tied to the riots while other peaceful protests don’t seem to have trouble with police at all. We can’t boil it down to race since protests contain people from all walks of life. Black Lives Matter, in particular, seems to have an overwhelmingly white showing despite the protest supposedly being centered around black Americans.

According to Pew Research, 46 percent of Black Lives Matter protesters are white. Compare that to the 17 percent that are black.

The only thing it can be chalked up to is the fact that Black Lives Matter is actively and openly violent. Antifa, a marxist organization tied to Black Lives Matter, promotes violence openly. As such, police are going to do their jobs and try to stop them, which is a large part of why BLM wants police defunded across America. They’d rather not be interrupted.

Regardless, there’s no question at this point that Black Lives Matter is an organization bent on bullying, destruction, and supremacy. It preys on Americans. It certainly doesn’t help them.

(READ: “Black Lives Matter” Is Preying on America’s Belief That Black Lives Matter)