The armed St. Louis couple who brandished guns during a Black Lives Matter protest have received at least 50 offers to replace the AR-15 seized by cops.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey’s attorney Joel Schwartz told Forbes a Missouri gun store was among those to have made the offers, which they are ‘kindly refuting’.
The couple, who are personal injury lawyers, were caught on video brandishing guns as demonstrators walked past their Renaissance palazzo-style home on June 28 while headed to protest outside of the mayor’s home nearby.
Authorities executed a search warrant Friday evening and the long-barreled gun Mark McCloskey, 61, was holding in the video was seized. ‘They took my AR. I’m absolutely surprised by this’, McCloskey said.
Attorney Schwartz said arrangements have been made to turn over to authorities on Saturday the handgun that Patricia McCloskey, 63, had been holding, adding that her gun was inoperable at the time of the protest and still is.
Schwartz admitted to Forbes ‘charges are more likely than they were two days ago’.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey, a husband and wife personal injury attorney duo, on June 28
Patricia McCloskey, left, works with her husband Mark, right, as a personal injury attorney
Gun store Alien Armory Tactical wrote on Facebook: ‘To the couple that had this warrant served, please come on by our shop and we will gladly rearm you with a brand new ar15 for ( FREE ).
‘We will gladly assist you with a replacement for you to protect your private property for FREE! Also we will assist you with some FREE firearms training so if anything were to happen you will be better prepared.’
The couple, who have a 25-year history of filing a slew of lawsuits against people including their own family, has not been charged. Schwartz added that charges against them would be ‘absolutely, positively unmerited.’
‘A search warrant being executed is clear indication of what the circuit attorney’s intentions are. Beyond that, I can’t comment,’ Schwartz said.
The protesters were en route to Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home to demand her resignation after she released the names and addresses of residents who had suggested defunding the police department.
They had broken their way into the gated community where the McCloskeys live.
Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner, who is St. Louis’ top prosecutor, issued a statement after the June 28 incident in which she said she was ‘alarmed’ by what happened.
Gardner added that ‘any attempt to chill (the right to peacefully protest) through intimidation or threat of deadly force will not be tolerated.’
Schwartz said that under Missouri law, people who are in reasonable apprehension or fear have the right to take necessary steps to defend themselves.
‘In this particular situation, people not only broke the law and trespassed on private property, but they committed property damage,’ Schwartz said, adding that a St. Louis business was burned down and a retired police captain was killed in the week leading up to the confrontation.
Photos of the couple standing outside their palatial property armed with an AR-15 and a handgun were beamed around the world at the end of June
Meanwhile, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Saturday that public records and interviews show the McCloskeys are almost always in conflict with others, typically over control of private property.
They filed a lawsuit in 1988 to obtain their house, a castle built for Adolphus Busch´s daughter and her husband in the early 20th century.
At the McCloskeys´ property in Franklin County, they have sued neighbors for making changes to a gravel road and twice evicted tenants from a modular home on their property.
Mark McCloskey sued a former employer for wrongful termination and his sister, father and his father´s caretaker for defamation.
The triangle of land bordering the McCloskey home has been the source of a long dispute
The McCloskeys and the trustees of Portland Place, the tony private street in a St. Louis historic district where they live, have been involved in a three-year legal dispute over a small piece of land in the neighborhood.
The couple claim they own it, but the trustees say it belongs to the neighborhood.
Mark McCloskey said in an affidavit that he has defended the patch previously by pointing a gun at a neighbor who tried to cut through it.