He does point the rifle at demonstrators, when he isn’t letting it point at his wife.
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Well that is super interesting and informative - but there still seems to be confusion on if the public generally accesses that area or not. Some are claiming later documentation shows the road is privately maintained. Or if it is public, why is foot traffic restricted as well? Should it be?
I’d really like to get to the definitive bottom of this so I can properly “destroy” any defense of these two.
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From this morning’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
St. Louis City Counselor Julian K. Bush affirmed that Portland, as well as several other streets in the West End, are indeed private.
“They are owned by the property owners, and the owners pay for them, the street repairs and maintenance,” Bush said Monday.
“The city has no right-of-way onto those streets,” he said.
Bush said homeowners are within their rights to exclude people from either driving their cars or walking through those areas.
I post this as information only and not as justification for these idiots.
ETA: Apparently they don’t let Google in either. No street view of the neighborhood.
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This is what structural racism looks like. Doubly so since they were there to protest at the Mayor’s house to begin with.
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Thanks for this information. It still doesn’t excuse the couples unsafe behavior, IMO.
The pearl clutching, “What are they doing here?” is just as bad as the Confederate flag waving yokels.
The article said they cut through Porland on the way to the mayor’s house. Is the Mayor’s house in Porland or outside of it?
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In contrast, here’s our mayor’s home (the blue one on the left):
Notice the open and accessible sidewalk and street, etc.
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She lives on Lake Ave. If you squint at the map I posted above, it’s the street perpendicular to Portland Place (still in the “private streets” area), so cutting through Portland Place made sense.
Protesters have been in front of her house many times in the past and I don’t recall any incidents, though.
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As others have noted, this is STILL a public street… They can’t keep pedestrians out. And there is no evidence that the protesters did that. And even if they did, these assholes were STILL threatening people for no reason. No one was storming their house. No one.
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“Peacefully Opened Gates”
As per post above (and the local newspaper), the street is not a public street.
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Exactly. If they had spent even a few seconds watching from a window they would have seen no one was giving their house a second look. Since none of their neighbors made it on the news I’m going to assume everyone else stayed inside and were none-the-worse.
If I was touring the house in the context of it being a historical building I’d have some fun taking photos. In terms of a place to live, it is not a place I would feel very comfortable, even for a short visit.
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Actually… maybe read the rest of the thread, it’s more complicated:
Read above.
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Interesting! Well that would change things wouldn’t it!
I’ll probably end up retracting my comment yet again.
Thanks for sharing that information.
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Ok, I’m imagining an unarmed peaceful KKK march to the mayor’s house to demand (official) segregation… Nope, still don’t want people waving their guns around. It is closer though, because there is a difference in threat level from a crowd demanding justice than a crowd demanding injustice.
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Thank @orenwolf, since he’s the one who brought it to our attention.
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true enough!
The people demanding injustice are far more likely to do things like blow up the houses or shoot those demanding justice. They are far more likely to proactively use violence as a political tool rather than as a defensive tool.
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Exactly.
Also, for another mental experiment, if this was clearly and unambiguously private property that people were marching across to get to the mayor’s house, would adding pistols and machine guns to the mix be the appropriate response? No, it would not.
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The Kansas City mayor lives in the 18th & Vine historical district, but I am not sure exactly where.
Ironically they have been asking for more police intervention around there lately. There are several minority owned businesses trying to revitalize it, but there have been several spates of violence (crime related, not protest related). But overall I am fairly impressed with their mayor.
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I agree with you. What I was trying to get across (poorly) is that at a bare minimum, it’s a clear case of brandishing. The degree to which it is assault or assault with a deadly weapon or something even more is way beyond my knowledge of the law
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