As Twitchy reported, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner charged Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the two attorneys who pointed firearms at Black Lives Matter protesters who were trespassing on private property on their way to the mayor’s house, with felony unlawful use of a weapon, as well as a misdemeanor charge of fourth-degree assault. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said later in the day that the McCloskeys had the right to defend their property.
The AR-15 that Mark McCloskey wielded had been seized after police exercised a search warrant, but the handgun that Patricia McCloskey had been handed over to an attorney, and KSDK in St. Louis reports that the gun was inoperable — until Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Hinckley had firearms experts put the gun back together.
Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Hinckley stated in charging documents that the gun was "readily capable of lethal use" https://t.co/vSxXH9bdiF
— KSDK News (@ksdknews) July 21, 2020
The gun Patricia McCloskey waved at protesters was inoperable when it arrived at the St. Louis police crime lab, but a member of St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Kim Gardner’s staff ordered crime lab experts to find out why and wrote that it was “readily capable of lethal use,” in charging documents filed Monday, 5 On Your Side has learned.
In Missouri, police and prosecutors must prove that a weapon is “readily” capable of lethal use when it used in the type of crime with which the McCloskeys have been charged.
At the request of Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Hinckley, crime lab staff members to field strip the handgun and found that it had been assembled incorrectly. Specifically, the firing pin spring was put in front of the firing pin, which was backwards, and made the gun incapable of firing, according to the documents.
Firearms experts then put the gun back together, per Hinckley’s request, in the correct order and test-fired it, finding that it worked, according to the documents.
Crime lab workers photographed the disassembly and reassembly of the gun, according to the documents.
Patricia McCloskey and her husband Mark McCloskey have said that the handgun Patricia McCloskey waved at protesters was inoperable because they had used it as a prop during a lawsuit they once filed against a gun manufacturer. In order to bring it into a courtroom, they made it inoperable.
So the McCloskeys knew the whole time that the gun was inoperable when Patricia pointed it at the trespassers, but the crime lab had it reassembled to prove it was a lethal weapon?
Well, this is bizarre. Patricia McCloskey's gun was apparently inoperative when police seized it bc it wasn't assembled correctly.
So crime lab staff reassembled it so that it could be fired. https://t.co/YyDFn9NONM
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) July 21, 2020
The McCloskeys say they had purposefully rendered the gun inoperable because they had used it as a prop in a prior lawsuit.
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) July 21, 2020
We’ll see if this news has any bearing on the felony charges brought against the couple.
Related:
‘Enough is enough’: Missouri’s attorney general ‘entering the case’ of the McCloskeys on grounds that their Second Amendment rights have been violated https://t.co/mJ5HMaDEUO
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 21, 2020
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