by WorldTribune Staff, June 9, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
During the riots of the summer of 2020, Mark McCloskey emerged from his home with an AR-15-style rifle, and Patricia McCloskey waved a semi-automatic pistol as a mob broke into their gated community in St. Louis.
The McCloskeys were initially charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon, but pleaded guilty in 2021 to misdemeanors. As part of the plea agreement, they forfeited the rifle and pistol that law enforcement had previously seized.
About a month later, Republican Gov. Mike Parson pardoned the McCloskeys.
On Wednesday, Judge Joseph P. Whyte expunged the charges.
Now, the McCloskeys want their guns back.
“It’s time for the city to cough up my guns,” Mark McCloskey told the Post-Dispatch.
If it doesn’t, he said, he’ll file a lawsuit.
Speaking to DailyMail.com earlier this year, Mark McCloskey said: "It's a matter of the Second Amendment; it's a matter of the government not having a right to take private property without just cause and without compensation. That's a constitutional right on a variety of levels. But mostly, it's just that I was being punished by a woke, Soros-funded prosecutor for doing no more than defending myself and exercising my second amendment rights, for which I should suffer no penalty whatsoever."
Both the city and the Circuit Attorney office argued the McCloskeys remained a threat but Judge Whyte ultimately disagreed.
The judge noted the protesters' testimonies highlighted a potential threat on the specific day of the incident, June 28, 2020, but not evidence of ongoing danger.
He emphasized the purpose of expungement as offering a second chance to those who have rehabilitated themselves.
The judge viewed a political ad by Mark McCloskey as protected free speech under the First Amendment, not proof of a continuing threat.
"It seems the parties have attempted to make political arguments in this proceeding," Whyte wrote. "This court, however, is required to look only at the relevant language in the statute."
