There's a reason normal people don't buy the "both sides are equally violent" narrative.

It's not because they've memorized datasets from think tanks.
It's because of what they can see.

You don't need a PhD to notice a pattern when:

• A congressional baseball practice gets shot up by a left-wing gunman intent on killing all the Republicans

• A conservative nonprofit, the Family Research Council is targeted for mass murder by a left-wing gunman motivated by the Southern Poverty Law Center

• A conservative Supreme Court justice is nearly assassinated by a transgender leftist who was angry about Roe v. Wade being overturned

• Prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood at a public speaking event by a left-wing gunman who etched progressive talking points into his bullets

• Multiple attempts are made on Donald Trump's life by left-wing gunmen

• Left-wing protests routinely call openly for political violence in public spaces

The "eye test" matters.

And yet, we're constantly told by media outlets and policy institutions that political violence in America is a perfectly symmetrical, "both sides" problem.

So what gives?

On NewsNation, journalist Batya Ungar-Sargon pulled back the curtain on the data that supposedly proves that claim. Her critique is simple:

The conclusion is only as good as the methodology.

Watch this masterclass in obliterating a narrative:

Here's Batya's breakdown of what's going on:

According to Batya Ungar-Sargon, the most widely cited "both sides" datasets aren't just imperfect. They're built on flawed inputs:

• The Prosecution Project leaves out major incidents
  She points out that high-profile cases like the assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the targeting of Charlie Kirk, and even large-scale unrest tied to the George Floyd riots (which resulted in dozens of deaths) are not included.

• But it still counts marginal or loosely connected cases
  For example, individuals affiliated with white nationalist groups (like members of the Aryan Nations involved in unrelated criminal activity like drug operations) are still counted as "political violence."

• The Cato Institute dataset has similar gaps
  According to Ungar-Sargon, it excludes major categories like riot-related deaths and even omits events like 9/11 when discussing political violence trends.

• The Center for Strategic and International Studies relies on outside groups for its data
  She notes that CSIS pulls from organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center — both of which have been outed for extreme ideological bias.

• Some definitions are structured to predetermine the outcome
  Ungar-Sargon highlights that in certain methodologies, all antisemitic violence is classified as "right-wing" by definition. If an attack is carried out under a different ideological banner (for example, in the name of Palestinian causes), it gets reclassified as "ethnonationalist" and categorized as "right-wing."

• That means some categories literally cannot exist in the data
  In practice, this creates a system where "left-wing antisemitism" is statistically impossible, no matter what actually happens.

These are the datasets journalists lean on to claim political violence is evenly distributed.

But if the inputs are selective (and the definitions are doing such heavy lifting) the conclusion starts to look a lot less like objective analysis and a lot more like a predetermined narrative.

That doesn't mean there's no such thing as right-wing violence. But Ungar-Sargon's point is that it clearly is not the public menace as extremism coming from the left.

You can't fix a problem if you're misrepresenting what it actually is. And that's where the disconnect comes in. Institutions may publish neat, symmetrical charts, but regular people are watching the news and thinking: "That doesn't line up with reality."

When the data keeps contradicting what everyone can see,
it's time to acknowledge this is not a misunderstanding.

It's manipulation

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.