Mark McCloskey walked into a police department, signed some paperwork, and picked up the AR-15 rifle that authorities had held for nearly five years. It took him 1,847 days, three lawsuits, and two trips to the Missouri Court of Appeals to get it back. His wife Patricia's handgun followed about sixty days later. The legal saga that began on a single summer evening in 2020, and turned a St. Louis couple into household names overnight, is finally, formally over.
But the costs are not.
The McCloskeys' law practice was, in Mark's word, "relatively destroyed." Death threats and hate mail persisted for years. Google listed the McCloskey Law Center as "permanently closed" for more than two years. And the couple endured criminal prosecution, guilty pleas, a pardon, an expungement fight, and a grinding multi-year battle just to recover two firearms that were lawfully theirs, all because they stood on their own property with guns while a crowd of strangers streamed through their private, gated neighborhood.
On June 28, 2020, Black Lives Matter demonstrators marched through Portland Place, a private gated street in St. Louis, heading toward the home of then-Mayor Lyda Krewson. The McCloskeys emerged from their house, Mark carrying an AR-15-style rifle, Patricia holding a handgun. Within hours, images of the confrontation spread nationwide, producing one of the most polarizing scenes of that turbulent summer.
To critics, the couple was brandishing firearms at peaceful demonstrators. To supporters, they were homeowners defending their property during a period of widespread civil unrest. The debate was never settled by consensus, but it was settled by a prosecutor.
Then-St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner charged the McCloskeys with unlawful use of a weapon. The prosecution drew immediate pushback from then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who sought to intervene in the case. Schmitt argued the charges raised broader questions about Missourians' rights to defend themselves and their property.
What happened next in the prosecutor's office made the case even more troubling. National Review reported that Patricia McCloskey's handgun was actually inoperable at the time she held it, the couple had intentionally rendered it nonfunctional to use as a prop in a separate lawsuit against a gun manufacturer. Under Missouri law, an inoperable firearm would have exonerated her from the charge. Yet assistant circuit attorney Chris Hinckley ordered crime lab technicians to reassemble the gun into working condition before attesting in charging documents that it was "readily capable of lethal use."
Attorney Joe Schwartz called it "disheartening to learn that a law enforcement agency altered evidence in order to prosecute an innocent member of the community."
In 2021, the McCloskeys pleaded guilty to misdemeanor offenses as part of a case resolution. Shortly afterward, then-Governor Mike Parson pardoned them both. But the legal fight was far from finished.
The couple pursued expungement of their convictions, and won. A Missouri appeals court affirmed the expungement, which under Missouri law means the convictions are treated as though they never occurred. Newsmax reported that the appeals court confirmed the expungement last month, clearing the final procedural barrier to the return of the seized firearms.
Even then, the guns did not come back automatically. McCloskey had to fight for them, filing lawsuit after lawsuit, appealing twice, and spending what he described as far more in legal costs than the rifle was worth.
McCloskey told Fox News Digital the experience taught him something about perseverance:
"It teaches the benefit of perseverance. It took me 1,847 days, three lawsuits and two trips to the Court of Appeals to get my rifle back and then another 60 days or so to get that pistol back."
He posted on X upon recovering the AR-15: "It only took 3 lawsuits, 2 trips to the Court of Appeals and 1,847 days, but I got my AR15 back!" Breitbart noted that McCloskey added in his post: "We defended our home, were persecuted by the left, smeared by the press, and threatened with death, but we never backed down."
He elaborated to Fox News Digital on the principle behind the fight, even when the economics made no sense:
"That gun may have only been worth $1,500 or something, and it cost me a lot of time and a lot of effort to get it back, but you have to do that. You have to let them know that you will never back down, you'll never give up."
The broader question of when the justice system is used as a weapon against citizens exercising their rights, rather than against those who break the law, has surfaced in other politically charged legal cases in recent years.
Now a U.S. senator, Eric Schmitt offered Fox News Digital a sharp retrospective on the prosecution. He framed the McCloskey case as part of a broader pattern in which progressive prosecutors pursued political targets while violent crime surged.
"As rioters razed St. Louis, activist prosecutors like Kim Gardner chose to go after law-abiding citizens like the McCloskeys, not the looters and criminals destroying our cities."
Schmitt went further, calling the prosecution an example of "the justice system being weaponized against law-abiding Missourians." He said his office intervened because the case was not an isolated incident.
"Unfortunately, the McCloskey case became the rule, not the exception. As violent crimes skyrocketed, progressive prosecutors like Gardner targeted conservatives in an obvious attempt to beef up liberal bona fides and advance partisan agendas instead of upholding the letter of the law."
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to Gardner's attorney for comment. No response was included in the report.
The question of whether prosecutors and courts apply the law evenly, or bend it to fit political preferences, has implications well beyond Missouri. The Supreme Court recently carved out an exception to plea-deal appeal waivers in cases involving a miscarriage of justice, a ruling that speaks to the same concern about procedural fairness that animated the McCloskey fight.
McCloskey did not minimize the damage the case inflicted on his life and career. He told Fox News Digital that his law practice was gutted.
"Our business was relatively destroyed. If you Googled the McCloskey Law Center for two years after that event or longer, it said 'permanently closed.' If you Google my name right now it still says Mark McCloskey is a former personal injury lawyer. Nobody told me I retired."
He also disclosed ongoing death threats and hate mail, consequences that continued years after the original incident.
Yet McCloskey said the ordeal also opened doors. He spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention. He ran for the U.S. Senate in Missouri in 2022. He represented hundreds of January 6 defendants, per the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He briefly stepped away from that work after receiving what he described as a diagnosis of an "incurable, always-fatal disease," but returned after the Justice Department announced plans for what it called an "Anti-Weaponization Fund", described as potentially compensating individuals supporters believe were unfairly prosecuted.
The Second Amendment questions raised by the McCloskey case echo through ongoing national debates. The Supreme Court unanimously struck down a federal gun law earlier this year, reinforcing that firearms rights are not abstractions but enforceable constitutional protections.
McCloskey told Fox News Digital that the experience, for all its costs, gave him something he would not have had otherwise:
"It has given us a voice that we would not otherwise have. I still speak around the country on constitutional rights in the First Amendment and the Second Amendment."
Al Watkins, the attorney who represented the McCloskeys during the early stages of the controversy, offered Fox News Digital a pointed assessment of how the situation unfolded. He placed blame not on the protesters themselves but on local officials who, he said, ordered police to stand down.
"The precipitating event was not the protest. It was the decision by local powers that be to mandate that local law enforcement be strictly 'hands off' protesters, regardless of their acts."
Watkins also pushed back against the racial framing that dominated early coverage. He said the McCloskeys were "immediately, incorrectly and unfairly labeled as racially motivated members of a privileged class." He urged others facing similar situations not to buckle under political pressure.
Meanwhile, efforts to restrict firearms rights continue to surface in various forms, including proposals to regulate even antique black powder muskets, which some gun-rights advocates view as a sign of how far the regulatory impulse can stretch.
Watkins closed with a simple wish for the couple: "I am hopeful they can live out their lives without again being demonized, victimized or prosecuted for protecting their American dream."
AP News reported that Judge Joseph P. Whyte, in granting the expungement, cited the purpose of giving rehabilitated individuals a second chance. Patricia's Bryco.380-caliber pistol was held by the St. Louis Sheriff's Department and expected to be returned shortly after the rifle.
Several questions remain open. No charges against the protesters who entered Portland Place on June 28, 2020 have been reported. The current status of the Justice Department's Anti-Weaponization Fund is unclear. Kim Gardner's attorney did not respond to Fox News Digital's inquiry. And McCloskey's medical condition, described only as an "incurable, always-fatal disease", has not been publicly specified.
What is clear is the math. One evening on a front lawn. Five years of litigation. Three lawsuits. Two appeals. Careers damaged, threats endured, a pardon, an expungement, and finally, finally, two firearms returned to their owners.
McCloskey summed up the lesson in a single line: "You can't rely on others. You have to be prepared. You have to know how to defend yourself."
When the system that is supposed to protect law-abiding citizens instead turns on them, that's not a talking point. It's a warning.
