St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey says when hundreds of protesters poured through a gate and into their private community on Sunday, it “was like the storming of the Bastille“, which is why he and his wife rushed outside their palatial home with a rifle and pistol to defend their lives and property.

“The gate came down and a large crowd of angry, aggressive people poured through,” Mark McCloskey said. “I was terrified that we’d be murdered within seconds. Our house would be burned down, our pets would be killed.”

While the St. Louis Circuit Attorney is investigating the case and seems to be pushing for a way to charge the McCloskeys for pointing their guns at protesters, no protester actually contacted police over the incident. Presumably, they didn’t want to be cited for trespassing. Instead, it was the McCloskeys who filed a police report. I’ve written before about the problems that the circuit attorney is going to have if she moves forward with charges, and I suspect if she does charge the McCloskeys it will be a case of political expediency versus a true attempt at seeking justice.

Even as the prosecutor weighs her options, the court of public opinion is quickly coming down in two camps. The first says that, although the McCloskeys need to get much more comfortable holding their firearms, they didn’t commit a crime. The second camp says that the McCloskeys clearly should be prosecuted for something for pointing a gun at protesters, and in the meantime, the pair should be cancelled.

This has led to at least one case of mistaken identity. Martin McCloskey, an attorney in Elkhart, Indiana, says he’s been besieged by harassing and threatening phone calls since the story of the St. Louis couple exploded on Monday.

Activists nationwide have been harassing the McCloskey Law Office in Elkhart in a case of mistaken identity since a couple with the same last name was recorded pointing guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators in St. Louis.

The couple in St. Louis, Mark and Patricia McCloskey, run the McCloskey Law Center in St. Louis.

Martin McCloskey runs the McCloskey Law Office in Elkhart.

People have been leaving negative reviews on Yelp and Google and have been receiving threatening phone calls, according to an email from the law office.

On Facebook, McCloskey wrote that he is “getting calls from people threatening to kill my staff, are vulgar and are using profanity as well as giving me bad reviews on Google and Yelp.”

They can’t even get his name right, much less the city and state. We’ve got an online mob so freaking irate over the actions of Mark McCloskey of St. Louis, Missouri that they’re threatening him and his staff with death, yet they’re so lazy or inept that they end up contacting Martin McCloskey of the Elkhart, Indiana McCloskeys. The mob isn’t just unthinking. It’s downright dumb.

If Martin McCloskey is getting it this bad, I imagine the threats and harrassment of Mark and Patricia McCloskey are 100 times worse.  The really sad and scary part about all of this is the role that the media is playing in stoking the outrage.

I hate to say this, but I think there are many reporters working in the field and engaging on social media who want to see the storming of the McCloskey mansion. I think they’re so offended by the McCloskeys that they’ve decided the couple should get what’s coming to them, and they won’t be happy until the flames lick the roof of the palatial home and everything inside is destroyed.

The McCloskeys are the current target of the Two Minute Hate, and I suspect that won’t change for at least a few days. Will the national media, for example, express the same outrage over the protester who shot the driver of a car in Provo, Utah on Monday evening? Not a chance.

Numerous witnesses provided video footage of a white SUV that was driving south on University Avenue before pulling into the right turn lane in an attempt to turn onto Center Street. Several protestors began crowding around the vehicle when a male protestor ran to the SVU on the passenger side, pointed a handgun at driver and shot one round through the window.

The driver, who was struck by the bullet, hit the gas trying to leave the situation when the same protestor ran after the vehicle and shot a second-round that went through the rear passenger window.

The video then shows that the protestor conceals the firearm and continues to protest.

Police said the same protestor later approached another vehicle at 500 North and University Avenue striking and breaking the window with the handgun.

Seems to me like that’s a more egregious sin than any committed by the McCloskeys, yet something tells me the media will be strangely uninterested in this story or finding out who perpetrated such a heinous act. The mob is focused on the McCloskeys at the moment, McCloskey may see another “storming of the Bastille” before all is said and done. Heck, Bastille Day is just around the corner. What are the odds the McCloskeys increase the security around their home and get some serious gun training before July 14?