The St. Louis homeowners who were seen in the viral video taking up their arms when Black Lives Matter protesters broke into their private property could be charged for brandishing weapons at the protesters, reports said.
Kim Gardner, the St. Louis Circuit attorney, told KMOV4 that her office is looking into the incident and said that she is “alarmed” that “peaceful protesters were met by guns and a violent assault. We must protect the right to peacefully protest.”
Video emerged online Sunday that showed protesters passing an armed white couple standing outside their luxury home in the area.
Mark McCloskey, the homeowner, told the station that he was eating dinner with his family when at least 100 protesters “smashed through the historic wrought iron gates” and rushed towards his home. He said his family was afraid for their lives.
“This is all private property,” he said. “There are no public sidewalks or public streets. We were told that we would be killed, our home burned and our dog killed. We were all alone facing an angry mob.”
Buck Sexton,the host of “The Buck Sexton Show,” said Monday that it is a “fundamental American right” to defend one’s property.
“You don’t have to wait to be victimized,” he said. He said it is interesting to see that members of the left are now “sticklers for the law.”
Sexton said that these protesters have been getting away with threatening violence for weeks with very little pushback from law enforcement. Sexton said that the incident in St. Louis is a reminder that the angry mob that has been on the offensive due to “soft touch” policing and the mob doesn’t quite know how to respond when someone draws a line in the sand and reminds them that this is the real world and not a college campus.
“Just because the police know that they will not have the political backing they need to enforce the law, it doesn’t mean that everyone plans on being helpless,” Sexton said.
Anders Walker, a constitutional law professor at St. Louis University, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that it was a dangerous situation when the homeowners whipped out their guns, but their street is private and they are legally protected under the state’s Castle Doctrine.
"The protesters thought they had a right to protest," Walker said. "But as a technical matter, they were not allowed to be there ... It’s essentially a private estate. If anyone was violating the law, it was the protesters. In fact if (the McCloskeys) have photos of the protesters, they could go after them for trespassing."