They broke through the gate on private property and then terrorized the neighborhood in search of the St. Louis mayor.
“They were just peacefully walking past” pic.twitter.com/A3Z1QoYzrO
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) June 29, 2020
But now the pair of armed attorneys who stood on their property and held off what they perceived as terroristic revolutionaries may be the target of criminal legal action. The stand off was intense and could have gone sideways and devolved into deadly violence.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey said they grabbed their guns and stood in front of their house, on their own property, to back-off screaming Black Lives Matter protesters, and told KSDK TV they thought they’d have to make a deadly last stand to protect themselves. See Mark McCloskey’s video below.
When they kick in the gate, when the first thing they do is destroy private property and they storm in angry and shouting and threatening. This isn’t a protest. It’s a revolution. It’s just an attempt to inflict terror.
McCloskey said “the only thing that stopped them was my rifle.” McCloskey’s wife had a pistol. He said she doesn’t know much about guns but knows a lot about feeling scared:
Well, you know, we were always obviously upset. My wife doesn’t know anything about guns, but she knows about being scared. And she grabbed a pistol and I had a rifle, and I was very, very careful I didn’t point the rifle at anybody. The only thing that stopped the crowd from approaching the house was when I had that rifle and I was holding there. The only thing that stemmed the tide. I can’t blame my wife for being terrified and for doing what she could to protect what she thought was her life, it was it was, you know, a horrible, horrible event.
But the St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner issued a statement that said the pair shouldn’t have defended their home and she’s on the case.
I was alarmed that at the events that occurred over the weekend, where peaceful protesters were met by guns and violent assault. We must protect the right to peacefully protest and any attempt to chill it through intimidation or threat of deadly force will not be tolerated.
Statement from Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner in regards to events over weekend: pic.twitter.com/KqqFHIvL9Q
— Circuit Attorney (@stlcao) June 29, 2020
St Louis and the Castle Doctrine
A local constitutional law professor told the St. Louis Dispatch said that the couple was clearly within their rights to protect their home because of the Castle Doctrine.
Anders Walker, a constitutional law professor at St. Louis University, said that although it’s “very dangerous” to engage protesters with guns, the homeowners broke no laws by brandishing or pointing weapons at them because Portland Place is a private street. He said the McCloskeys are protected by Missouri’s Castle Doctrine, which allows people to use deadly force to defend private property.
“At any point that you enter the property, they can then, in Missouri, use deadly force to get you off the lawn,” Walker said, calling the state’s Castle Doctrine a “force field” that “indemnifies you, and you can even pull the trigger in Missouri.”
The couple, who are defense attorneys – Mark McCloskey is even representing a black man who was beaten by police – said these people aren’t protesters, “they’re revolutionaries. I thought they were storming the Bastille.”
… [A]s soon as I said this is private property, those words enraged the crowd. Horde, absolute horde came through the now smashed down gates coming right at the house. My house, my east patio was 40 feet from Portland Place Drive. And these people were right up in my face, scared to death. And then, I stood out there. The only thing we said is this is private property. Go back. Private property. Leave now.
At that point, everybody got enraged. There were people wearing body armor. One person pulled out some loaded pistol magazine and clicked them together and said that you were next. We were threatened with our lives, threatened with a house being burned down, my office building being burned down, even our dog’s life being threatened. It was, it was about as bad as it can get. I mean, those you know, I really thought it was Storming the Bastille that we would be dead and the house would be burned and there was nothing we could do about it. It was a huge and frightening crowd. And they were they broken the gate were coming at us.
St Louis Revolutionaries
The St. Louis attorney likened the Black Lives Matter protesters to the crazed French Revolutionaries and their reign of terror.
DC protesters have set up a “guillotine” in protest of Jeff Bezos in front of his complex in DC pic.twitter.com/VZ0AWTJqaV
— Drew Hernandez (@livesmattershow) June 28, 2020
McCloskey is on to something. Antifa and BLM even introduced their own guillotine in Washington, DC in front of Jeff Bezos’s house on Monday in hopes of bringing back the National Razor.
Sounds like this kind of situation is exactly why we have a Second Amendment.
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