Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who felt the need to point their guns at a group of protesters who weren’t even bothering them last summer, plead guilty to misdemeanor assault and harassment charges and have lost the guns they used in the incident.
According to HuffPost, the couple was indicted on felony charges but pleaded guilty on lesser charges to avoid prison time. They were fined $3,000 and ordered to surrender the guns they threatened protesters with last summer. Richard Callahan, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, said in a statement he felt the charges were adequate as the guns weren’t fired and nobody was hurt.
“The protesters were a racially mixed and peaceful group, including women and children, who simply made a wrong turn on their way to protest in front of the mayor’s house,” said Callahan’s statement. Last summer, a group of protesters in St. Louis were marching to the mayor’s house to protest her essentially doxing various Black Lives Matter activists who were in favor of defunding the police. Not keen to mind their own business, the McCloskeys went peak-Whiteness and threatened the protesters with an AR-15 and handgun.
Outside the courthouse, McCloskey said he agreed with prosecutors that he placed the protesters in “imminent fear of physical harm,” saying that’s what the guns are for. He also vowed to do the same thing that got him sent to court in the first place, because I guess he believes his Second Amendment rights trump everyone else’s First Amendment rights.
Imagine being this much of a shithead? Sounds goddamn exhausting, if you ask me.
Despite being ordered to turn in their guns, this didn’t deter the McCloskeys from proudly taking to Twitter only days after the ruling and posing with yet another AR-15 in a gun store.
Honestly, it just goes to show how shitty gun control is in this country that a man can be ordered by the court to turn in his guns, turn around, and straight-up buy a new one. Like most folks in the modern GOP (the G stands for grifter), the McCloskeys have tried to milk their 15 minutes of infamy for all its worth, appearing at the Republican National Convention last year to advocate for the former president, and Mark McCloskey announcing earlier this year that he would be running for the U.S. Senate.
Missouri, please do us all a favor and take out your trash when it comes time to vote next year.