It's been almost two years since Mark McCloskey and his wife Patricia became nationally known when video broke of them standing, armed, outside their St. Louis home to stop protesters from coming onto his property.
Now, as he's running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, he tells Newsmax that crime is growing in the nation because there is no respect for law enforcement.
"The number of people killed every year by long rifles by long guns of all kinds is less than the number of people killed with hands and fists and feet, so that's a total red herring," the Republican attorney and candidate to represent Missouri told Newsmax's "National Report" Wednesday. "We have a war on police going on in this country."
Police departments, he added, are underfunded but facing people who are "increasingly disrespectful."
"Whoever is running in this country likes mob violence, likes the mob to rule because it puts fear into the hearts of the population and the fearful population is willing to give up its rights and that's where we have to fight against," said McCloskey.
McCloskey is seeking the nomination for the Senate seat now held by GOP Sen. Roy Blunt, who announced last year that he won't seek reelection. McCloskey told Newsmax that he is a "vigorous proponent of the Second Amendment," but complained that "George Soros-funded prosecutors" are making U.S. cities dangerous because they don't want to enforce the law.
"They're sweeping away entire areas of crime because they don't want it to be crimes," said McCloskey. "For example, in the city of St. Louis, they've ordered the local police to not enforce any federal drug crimes. Our local prosecutor and our new mayor are bragging about the reduction in inmate numbers in the city jails, but that's just because they don't arrest people and they don't prosecute people."
On a national basis, he added, prosecutors must have a duty to enforce laws that legislatures say must be enforced.
"I'm sitting here in the living room in my house behind half-inch thick, bulletproof Lexan (windows)," McCloskey said. "That's the real world in St Louis these days."
Meanwhile, he said the event that made him famous seems even more frightening now.
"We got all the police records, we've got the videos, even the eye in the sky (view) from the FBI," he said. "When you see it, now in retrospect, the huge crowd…if I'd seen that crowd that I see in the eye in the sky video crashing through the gate coming in, it's more frightening now looking at it in retrospect than it was at the time."
"It left a mark, that's all I can say," he added. "It's an impetus for change in this country, I hope … that's all I can say. And I said, you know, it's an impetus for some changes in this country. I hope."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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