A husband and wife who pointed guns at protesters walking through their St. Louis neighborhood visited Durant recently.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey made national news in 2020 when they confronted protesters walking through their private neighborhood while on the way to protest at then-St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home.
Both were later charged and Mr. McCloskey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and Mrs. McCloskey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment. The original charges were felony unlawful use of a weapon until they pleaded guilty to the reduced charges. The McCloskeys were later pardoned by Gov. Mike Parson and the records have been expunged.
The Southeastern College Republicans hosted the McCloskeys on Sept. 10 and that evening, Mr. McCloskey spoke during a meeting of the Bryan County chapter of the Oklahoma Second Amendment Association at Fairview Baptist Church.
Connor Alford of the Bryan County chapter of the Second Amendment Association introduced the Mc-Closkeys at Fairview Baptist Church.
“Mark and Patricia McCloskey are just tremendously courageous defenders of liberty and the American constitution,” Alford said.
Mr. McCloskey said that on June 28, 2020, God came knocking on his door disguised as an angry mob.
“That’s why we’ve been traveling the country for the last four years putting on these presentations,” McCloskey said. “Let me start this way though: How many of us think we got a right to be free? How many of us think we got a right to defend ourselves if we need to? How many of us believe that we’ve got the right to defend ourselves with guns if necessary? How many of us recognize that those rights come to us as human beings made in the image of the Lord and those rights given to us by God should not be taken away by any government.”
McCloskey spoke of the crime rate in St. Louis.
“Those of you that live out here in the civilized world have absolutely no idea what it’s like living in a place like the city of St. Louis,” he said. “St. Louis is always the murder capital for the United States. Sometimes, the murder capital of the world. Sometimes we get outmatched by Washington D.C. or New Orleans or Detroit, either in murders or crime. Sometimes we’re just number two, but number two stinks anyway, right?”
He said St. Louis has 20 times the murder rate of New York City.
McCloskey also spoke about the George Floyd riots in St. Louis.
“On June 2, (2020) the city of St. Louis, those people who claim to have the moral high ground, those people that claim to be the champions of diversity, equity and inclusion decided the best way to show their love for the city of St. Louis was by burning it down and that night, they set downtown St. Louis on fire,” McCloskey said. “They shot four police officers. They murdered retired police captain David Dorn working (security) at a pawn shop about a half-mile from my house, but the most impressive thing that my wife and I saw was a 7-Eleven in downtown St. Louis, two blocks from police headquarters.
“From the time the first brick went through the window and they looted it empty and they set it on fire and we were watching this from a live helicopter feed. You know how many police showed up? Zero. Do you know how many firemen showed up? Zero.”
McCloskey said that during the coming weeks, more businesses in their neighborhood were being boarded up and that it took police 10 hours to respond to an alarm at a business.
“One of the advantages if you’re a criminal and living in a city like St. Louis where there’s no repercussions for crime is you advertise your crimes in advance,” McCloskey said. “The Antifa organization in St. Louis is headed by a young lady, Cori Bush who is now our first district congresswoman for Missouri, who fortunately lost the primary last month.”
McCloskey said Bush distributed a flyer announcing action in his neighborhood to take place on Friday, June 26, 2020.
“Because we knew they liked to burn stuff and because there’s a lot of stuff in our house, including us, that we didn’t want to have burned up, I went out and got a bunch of fire extinguishers and put them all around the first floor of the house and because we knew they liked to shoot people and we made a commitment to ourselves and if they came our way, we weren’t going to take it sitting down, and put a whole bunch of guns around the first floor of the house,” McCloskey said. “When that Friday night came and went and nothing happened, no riot, no mob action. You know, we dodged that bullet literally and figuratively.”
On the following Sunday, Mc-Closkey said they heard what he described as a “mob” forming down the street.
“We are the only people in this completely leftist part of St. Louis that are known to be conservative Republicans and so we get targeted,” he said. “The flyer that goes out that day from Cori Bush’s organization says, ‘We’re going to be loud, we’re going to be in their faces.”’ McCloskey said the couple’s daughter was visiting from Chicago and that they were barbecuing a pork loin when they heard the protesters.
“We hear the mob forming down the street and you hear all the same stupid chants of, ‘Whose streets, our streets. No justice, no peace, no racist police, and the one I like the best because it’s being chanted into the megaphone by Cori Bush is, ‘You can’t stop the revolution.’
“We’re sitting up there on the porch and all of the sudden, all of Kingshighway Boulevard fills from wall-to-wall, we’re talking six lanes plus a grassy strip, plus sidewalk. We’re talking 100 feet wide as far out as we can filled with hundreds of angry mobsters screaming and chanting and pounding their fists against the ground. The only thing separating them from us are three notrespassing signs and a 138-yearold wrought iron gate.”
McCloskey said he looked at his wife and said he hoped they didn’t come this direction.
“Right as the gate gets folded down, these people start swarming in … hundreds of them and so I stood up on the corner of the porch and I said what I always describe as the two most racist white supremacist words known in the English language,” McCloskey said. “I said, ‘Private property.’” He said the crowd starting pouring in and a 911 call had absolutely no effect.
“I reached around the corner where I had the stash and grabbed an AR-15,” McCloskey said. “So now, I’m standing out there on the corner of the porch with my rifle and I’m thinking I’m doing okay. Now, there’s hundreds of them coming. Ten ranks deep. All screaming death and arson and rape and murder and even threatening to kill my dog.”
McCloskey said Mrs. McCloskey then came out waving a pistol that was not operable.
“Now, I’ve got a problem because she’s in my line of fire,” McCloskey said. “She’s right between me and the mob so if something goes down, I might accidentally put a bullet in her and we’ve been married at about 38 years at that point. I figured I didn’t really want to accidentally shoot her so now I’ve got to come out on the grass in the front and that’s when you start seeing all of those photographs.
“If you look closely at our famous photograph, you’ll see that the selector switch on that AR is in the fire position because if you recall one photograph where I’m holding my rifle like this and leaning over and talking to Patty. What’s going on then is there are a couple of guys in body armor coming up the steps at us.
“The guy is wearing camo and he reaches into the ammo pocket in his armored (vest), pulls out two loaded magazines. I’m close enough to him I can see they’re loaded. He clips them together, points at me and says, ‘You’re next.’ The guy standing next to him wearing light-colored body armor, like Desert Shield-type armor, he turns around and it says human shield on his back and he’s sporting a sidearm, and I’m leaning over to Patty and I’m creeping forward.
“I said, ‘If those guys come any closer, I’m going to have to kill them and Patty leans over to me and says, ‘You’re not killing anybody tonight.’ The voice of reason, right? Didn’t put off a shot. Nobody got hurt, but that was the power of the Second Amendment.
“Until you’re facing 350 to 500 people all screaming at the same time and screaming death and murder and rape and arson, you can’t imagine - two people, two guns against a crowd of hundreds and we held them off.”
McCloskey then recited the Second Amendment.
“Part of that is what we did and that’s protect ourselves against a mob,” he said. “Well, the biggest mob in this country is the government, right? The second part of that Second Amendment is your right to keep and bear arms is your right to defend yourself against an overreaching government.”
McCloskey said that later on national television, he was asked to define an assault weapon.
“I said, ‘Sure, it’s easy,’” Mc-Closkey said. “It’s an effective defense against an overreaching government and that’s what the Second Amendment is really all about. It’s the thing that protects our freedom.”
