If you destroy someone's livelihood and make them and theirs go hungry, are you not committing violence against them? If you destroy cars people need to reach work and earn their keep, are you not doing violence against them? If you burn down a church, are you not stripping someone else of their civil rights?

Many leftists will argue that sanctions are inherently violent and murderous because they often push people on the precipice over the edge and kill them from malnutrition or lack of medical access. Yet when rioters do essentially the same, destroy property in already precarious communities, this argument is made that it's not violence, it is a noble political demonstration. I for one do not buy it and find it hard to believe that your anecdotal business owner is representative of the wider economic and individual impact riots have.

The truth of the matter is that riots are a symptom. There is nothing noble about a riot and they are inherently violent, even if only property is destroyed. In the same way that those capital rioters deserve prison, so too do other rioters. That does not mean the conditions that caused the riots are just or proper but neither are the rioters righteous.