A St. Louis prosecutor charged a married couple with unlawful use of weapons, a class E felony, for brandishing guns at BLM protesters walking through their gated community, saying they risked turning the peaceful protest into “a violent situation,” but will recommend community service if they’re convicted.
However, a felony conviction would bar them from having guns in the future, and might implicate their licenses to practice law (although I think it’s unlikely anything will happen to their lawyers’ licenses because of this). The defendants have a personal injury law practice.
“It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner — that is unlawful in the city of St. Louis,” prosecutor Kim Gardner said. The attorney for the couple said they did nothing wrong and called the charges “disheartening.”
The couple have said they were defending their home, but the protesters were simply walking past their mansion en route to the mayor’s residence, and the couple has a history of claiming “squatters rights” to property that isn’t theirs, including the street the protesters were walking in, and aggressively challenging people they consider trespassers, including their neighbors. They denied their confrontation with the protesters, many of whom were black, was racially motivated. In other words, they pull guns on white people, too.
Taking their guns away seems like a good idea. Many experts say dogs are better for home defense, anyway.
Read story here, and see original post here.
(UPI photo)
They also have a defense that most juries in Missouri will bite at. And a gov who has already stated he will pardon them. As it is the Prosecutor is proceeding in a manner that suggests he hopes they will roll over and give him a win, and they are not rolling and being good attorneys have an attorney. While Missouri is not Texas it is not Washington state and the law and public attitudes are closer to Texas than out here in Washington. And to make things weird it is a gated community, so they may own the street tough it likely is some kind of public through way, or not so public as you have to be an owner n the community or have prior permission from an owner in the community to enter. So perhaps the city prosecutor should be charging trespass on each protestor who entered, a good defense attorney will use that to make hay.
It’s not a public street but they don’t own it except in common with the other property owners. In any case, you can’t point a gun at someone for just any reason. Even on private property, that’s a criminal assault unless you had a reasonable belief there was a genuine danger of harm to persons or property. What a jury will do with this is anybody’s guess. What the governor does is play politics.