By: Teresa Mull

GPM reported last week that the couple who defended themselves, their home, and their property from looters in St. Louis had a gun seized from their home during a police search.

Now, The Washington Post reports, Lawyers Mark and Patricia McCloskey…

… were each charged Monday with one felony count of unlawful use of a weapon.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who filed the charges against the McCloskeys, did not order the couple to surrender or be arrested. Instead, as part of Gardner’s reformist approach to reducing incarceration for low-level crimes, she issued summonses and said she would consider them for a diversion program, which would enable the charge to be dismissed if counseling or another remedial course were completed. The charge carries a possible penalty from probation to four years in prison.

Mark McCloskey appeared on Fox News Monday night and said, “It’s a totally upside-down world. The prosecutor apparently thinks her job isn’t to keep us safe from criminals, but to keep the criminals safe from us. … We’re not going to apologize for doing what’s right.”

He said the protests over racial injustice are “a concerted effort to destroy our way of life. To change the fundamental social contract, do away with capitalist democracy and replace it with mob rule.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) “told a St. Louis radio station Friday that he thinks a pardon is ‘exactly what would happen’ if Mark and Patricia McCloskey are hit with charges in the June 28 incident captured on video and seen by millions,” Fox News reports. “He later added that based on what he knows about the case, ‘I don’t think they’re going to spend any time in jail.’”

Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.