It wasn’t a week ago that this site published the article “On Mob’s Side, Government Tells Citizens: You’re on Your Own — but Don’t DARE Defend Yourself.” It related the story of a Virginia mother and young child who, being attacked by a “protesting” mob, were told by a dispatcher there was nothing the police could do and that they should complain to city hall. And now, mere days later, comes the story of a husband and wife who defended themselves from a mob and now are fighting city hall — in fact, they may face criminal charges.
It was Sunday evening when, says 63-year-old Mark McCloskey, Black Lives Matter “protesters” broke down a gate to Portland Place, the private community where he and his family live in St. Louis, Missouri’s Central West End neighborhood.
“‘A mob of at least 100 smashed through the historic wrought iron gates of Portland Place, destroying them, rushed towards my home where my family was having dinner outside and put us in fear for our lives,’ Mr McCloskey told KMOV,” reported the Independent Tuesday.
“‘It was like the storming of the Bastille, the gate came down and a large crowd of angry, aggressive people poured through,’ said Mr McCloskey,” the paper also related. “‘I was terrified that we’d be murdered within seconds. Our house would be burned down, our pets would be killed.’”
In fact, the mob did threaten to murder McCloskey’s dog; harm him and his wife, 61-year-old Patricia; and burn down their home, he said in a later interview.
And as McCloskey put it Tuesday, when he and his lawyer were interviewed by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, “By the time we looked up and we saw the marchers coming down Kings Highway and getting loud, we looked over the gate and there’s no police there. Our private security wasn’t there. Nobody’s there.”
“People start coming in,” McCloskey told the host moments later. “And then a flood of people start coming in; they are angry, they’re screaming, they’ve got spittle coming out of their mouth, they’re coming toward the house….”
“I turned to my wife and I said, ‘Oh, my God, we’re absolutely alone,’” McCloskey also related. “‘There is nobody here to protect us.’”
He also stated that it was a seconds-count situation, saying that by “the time I was out there with my rifle, the people were 20 or 30 feet from my front wall…” (Carlson interview below).
Despite this, McCloskey has been labeled “racist,” been generally demonized in the media, and has been implicitly threatened with criminal charges.
As St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, a Soros-money-backed Democrat, put it in the statement below:
Statement from Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner in regards to events over weekend: pic.twitter.com/KqqFHIvL9Q
— Circuit Attorney (@stlcao) June 29, 2020
Interestingly, Gardner (see the video version of her statement below) wasn’t “alarmed” by how hooligans had broken the law by violently trespassing on private property.
But none of this is surprising. Not only does Gardner face re-election in a left-wing area, but she’s actually a radical activist in prosecutor’s clothing. As Carlson reported:
In 2019, Gardner brought criminal charges in just 23 percent of the cases the St. Louis police brought her. Her policies have helped destroy that [her] office.
…Since she took over, the prosecutor turnover there has surpassed 100 percent. Gardner’s reaction to any criticism about this never changes: allege a racial conspiracy against her, and then move on. At the start of this year Gardner sued the local police union and several city officials, accusing them of quote, “a racially motivated conspiracy to deny the civil rights of minorities.” She charged them under the Ku Klux Klan Act.
“After riots ripped through American cities, Gardner was clear about who she supported in it all,” Carlson then stated before playing part of the Gardner video below (relevant portion begins at 0:44).
(Hat tip: Washington Examiner.)
Those riots also helped shape McCloskey’s thinking Sunday evening, according to McCloskey himself. He mentioned to Carlson that when riots ravaged St. Louis June 2, matters turned violent almost at the blink of an eye. And, he said of the victims’ plight, “Nobody came that entire time.”
Of course, McCloskey also could have mentioned the L.A. riots in the ‘90s or the mayhem in Hurricane Katrina’s wake, both situations where feckless authorities let citizens twist in the wind. Or he could have cited the aforementioned (opening paragraph) Virginia mother told by 911 that emergencies don’t count anymore.
The bottom line is that McCloskey rightly concluded he was on his own. He’s still being targeted, however, despite fitting a liberal profile. After all, he’s a personal injury lawyer, wealthy, resides in a liberal area and, to the point here, says that both he and his wife support Black Lives Matter’s message.
Particularly shameful, but not surprising, was his treatment when interviewed by Chris Cuomo on Wednesday (video below).
Cuomo tried to put an onus on McCloskey by dismissing the threat he faced. The mob members “did not go up your steps, they didn’t go into your house,” said the host — “they didn’t touch you, they didn’t try to enter your home, they didn’t try to do anything to your kids.” But as a commenter retorted under the above video, taking on McCloskey’s voice:
“Yep, and I didn’t shoot them.”
But he did stop them.
As McCloskey explained to Cuomo, “they were coming at us until I displayed the weapon and that stopped them.”
Should he have waited?
As Professor Thomas Sowell once put it, addressing such situations, “Do I have to wait for someone else to pull a gun before I pull a gun? Is this some kind of sporting competition?”
Wait until you’re attacked to take preventive action and it may be too late. McCloskey merely did what a study determined millions of Americans do yearly: He wielded a firearm to deter criminals. He met an apparent threat (the mob’s actions) with his own apparent threat (wielding a rifle). His reaction to the action was proportionate.
Yet there’s a deeper issue here. Despite their apparent liberal bent, the McCloskeys have come up against a fashionable prejudice. They are precisely what the Left is demonizing and loves to hate — they’re white, wealthy, and well-armed.
Exemplifying this prejudice, the aforementioned Independent article highlighted the McCloskeys’s race in their headline and wrote the caption, “White couple in St Louis pointed weapons at protesters.”
Interestingly, there was no mention of how many of the protesters appeared to be white. Nor did the media complain about “high-powered, semi-automatic weapons” in the hands of the CHOP insurrectionists who seized part of Seattle and, ultimately, shot people.
Nor did they complain when black storeowners a while back wielded rifles (which they also were right to do) to protect their property from Peaceful Protesters™.
But, of course, to successfully persecute people requires more than just demonizing them (e.g., shouts of “white privilege!” and “All whites are racist!”). You also must ensure they can’t defend themselves from the rabble you rouse.
And that’s the divide-and-conquer way of the power-mad demagogues.
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
