The conservative pundit-world has demonized BLM, if you watch Fox News all the time you’d think every peaceful protest was a ruse to have a riot and steal designer clothes and flat screen TVs.
You can’t even discuss the matter either, there’s no way to have reasoned political debate in the US anymore.
A paranoid rich white couple pointing guns at black protesters is the perfect metaphor for what America is now.
Sad, and true.
The original AR models are outwardly identical to the M-16’s. You can’t tell from these photos which he’s holding. Without a clear view of the firing selector or tearing it open to look up the upper/lower firing mechanism, we wouldn’t know. I would assume it’s an AR, one he’s clearly uncomfortable holding and has little clue how to use. And the wife is worse, with zero trigger discipline. She’s lucky she didn’t shoot someone.
I don’t even know that I’d call this a mansion; It doesn’t look like it has enough room for a guillotine and spectators.
FTFY
If Mayor Lyda Krewson doesn’t hold “[a]rmed homeowners Mark and Patricia McCloskey” (FTA) truly accountable for their actions, that’ll be yet another reason to call for her resignation.
IANAL but:
I put the odds on the mayor’s resignation at about 50:1.
And the odds of the McCloskeys even being arrested (much less going to trial) at maybe 1000:1.
Perhaps they are starting to realize that. If it were my house, I wouldn’t want the mob getting a glimpse of the interior either, for fear they would make the obvious associations.
“Mommy, why did you threaten to kill the protesters?”
“Because ALL lives matter, dear.”
I realized my reply sounded mean and I apologize. I wuz angry at them not you
Lol, the kaki pants!
Replying to my own post here. Zoom in on that crazy ass painting. I think after they chased away the scary Antifas they totally had sex under it
Thank you for saying that. It did seem a little more than necessary!
They’re attorneys; how “professional.”
It’s worth calling out, part of white privilege is that they don’t even need to realize that brandishing a gun has different ramifications for white and black people. They can avoid the cognitive dissonance altogether.
I’m guessing that she doesn’t think that she is pointing the gun at people; or she wouldn’t be acting like that.
They have been identified here:
If you’re intending to refer to Missouri’s “castle doctrine,” that’s not how it works. The castle doctrine says that if someone enters your home with the intention to harm you, you don’t have a duty to retreat and can use deadly force.
It does NOT provide that one can point a firearm at people standing outside your property. Even if you’re a pants-pissing shit-head and even if you’d really like to fulfill some roleplay fantasies.
IIRC what you’re describing is a zip gun. A Saturday Night Special is an actual gun, just a cheap and low-quality one.
Here’s a lot of detail on the protest:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/st-louis-protest-gun-waving-couple
I expect paywalled, but I’m going to quote here:
By David Kurtz
June 29, 2020 11:18 a.m.
TPM Reader MD writes in with his personal account of the St. Louis protest that featured the gun-waving Bonnie and Clyde in front of their “Midwestern palazzo”:
Trump just re-tweeted images of the gun-toting St. Louis couple, so this seems destined to become a national obsession. Might as well send you my two cents.
I was in St. Louis last night. In fact, I attended the protest. Let me give you a play-by-play.
At 6 pm CDT, protesters led by the Expect Us group gathered at the intersection of Maryland and Euclid Avenues. This is the heart of the commercial part of the Central West End, an upscale neighborhood adjacent to the north-east corner of Forest Park. (The park, for what it’s worth, is an enormous urban oasis featuring the STL Zoo, the Art Museum, an open-air theater known as the Muni, the Missouri History Museum, two golf courses, and an ice skating rink.)
The crowd rallied for about forty-five minutes before moving west along Maryland Ave to Kingshighway, a major arterial road. The group stood in the crosswalks facing north and south, occupying the intersection of Kingshighway and Westmoreland Place. Police blocked traffic along the entire route and essentially minimized contact with protesters.
By approximately 7 pm, another group of protesters marching up Kingshighway from the south met up with the first group. The combined group occupied and rallied at the intersection of Lindell Blvd and Kingshighway.
By 7:20, the groups marched north on Kingshighway, before splitting into two groups. One turned left onto Portland Place, squeezing through the enormous pedestrian entrance a couple of people at a time (car traffic from Kingshighway is blocked off by an enormous gate). The other half of the group continued up Kingshighway to Waterman Blvd, where they also turned left. The eventual rendezvous point was Mayor Lyda Krewson’s house, which is on Lake Ave at the corner of Westminster.
Shortly after the first group of protesters began walking through the pedestrian entrance onto Portland Place, at approximately 7:30 CDT, two people came out onto the lawn of the opulent mansion at 1 Portland Place.
The man carried what looked like an AR-15 and the woman was carrying a small silver pistol. These are the people you have seen photos of. There was a real change in the energy of the crowd. The protest leaders announced that no one under 18 should walk down Portland Place and should instead go with the 2nd group up to Waterman. From my position on Kingshighway, I could see the couple through the gate. They were pointing their guns at the crowd. I had a somewhat obstructed view, but I could certainly hear commands from the crowd of “keep moving” and “stay on the street only.” I couldn’t tell whether there were protesters on the mansion’s lawn.
What the man and woman holding the guns said was inaudible to me, I could only get a sense that they were menacing the crowd. From my perspective, there didn’t seem to be any threat to the property at 1 Portland Place or any violence at all during the protest in general.
The people brandishing the guns changed the atmosphere completely. In response, a small number of protesters began making “come at me bro” gestures. As my wife whispered “welcome to Missouri,” we quickly decided this confrontation was not for us and walked up to Waterman, along which we continued to the mayor’s house.
As the group marched through the neighborhood, chants included “black lives matter,” “no justice, no peace,” “out of your homes and into the streets,” and “if we can’t get it shut it down.” We also chanted the names Mike Brown, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Eventually, the group rallied in front of the mayor’s house, asking for her resignation and for her to shut the Workhouse (a prison that many feel has outlived its usefulness as it is only partially filled) and defund the St. Louis police.
There was quite a lot of anger among the group about the fact that the mayor had read the names and home addresses of letter writers favoring defunding the police out loud during an online availability. She has apologized, but it was not received well by activists, whose lives she has directly put in danger. Several St. Louis activists have been killed or gone missing since the protests touched off by Michael Brown’s killing.
When I got home, I googled the address of the mansion and came across this 2018 profile of the mansion, which contains information about its owners, whom it is possible to find online as well.
These are just some quick notes about my personal experience. Oh, and the crowd was organized and disciplined–water and snacks were distributed, medical cars drove along with the crowd, and 95% of people wore masks.
Thanks to MD for his account. She mentions the magazine profile of the palatial St. Louis home our dynamic duo was “guarding” from protestors. Here’s a delightfully ironic excerpt:
The McCloskeys have had fun seeking out objects original to the house as well as filling it with their own antiques, including a rare 1560 s tipo a bambocci carved wooden cabinet made in Genoa and a Louis XIII homme-debout (“standing man”) armoire, so named because, during the Reign of Terror, a gentleman could hide inside one.
This detail, though:
There was quite a lot of anger among the group about the fact that the mayor had read the names and home addresses of letter writers favoring defunding the police out loud during an online availability. She has apologized, but it was not received well by activists, whose lives she has directly put in danger. Several St. Louis activists have been killed or gone missing since the protests touched off by Michael Brown’s killing.
Talk about a thousand words. There are many fine posts here today, but I keep coming back here and laughing.
