They'll get to prove their point in court, where, as personal injury lawyers, they seem to spend a lot of time on their own personal cases. I too have some experience with HOAs and none of them I have been associated with provide for individuals ordering anyone our of the collectively administered property at gun point. A property owner in the HOA can certainly convey to trespassers that they are engaging in trespass, but making them leave the common ground or detaining them at gunpoint is not within their authority. That is what the SO or the police are for.
No doubt the protestors are guilty of trespass on the HOA property, but the McCloskeys are guilty of brandishing. The tampering with evidence charge has me wondering too.
Alan
There have been cases in the news lately all over the country of armed residents keeping protesters out of neighborhoods, checking IDs of people coming in, etc. The cops aren't doing their jobs and stopping the violence in neighborhoods. The people have a right to step up when that happens. That is what 2A is for. Cops would be the best answer, but if they won't show and get the job done, then what? The power is with the people.
MO law says a person may "...use physical force upon another person when and to the extent that he or she reasonably believes it necessary to prevent what he or she reasonably believes to be the commission or attempted commission by such person of stealing, property damage or tampering in any degree. A person may use deadly force...only when such use of deadly force is authorized under other sections of this chapter." Basically, the claim in that last sentence will be disparity of force, two people versus a mob.
Portland Place is not your typical HOA, BTW, it is a very exclusive, gated community. If you are not invited, you cannot be in the common areas, period. You cannot "walk through" Portland Place. You can be arrested for trespassing just being there uninvited.
But again, I agree the McCloskeys did not handle it well and as lawyers and gun owners, they should have known that. I think if they had proper muzzle discipline and kept the guns pointed up, or down at the ground, they would have been within their rights.
The tampering with evidence thing is over the firing pin in Mrs. McCloskey's pistol. When the St. Louis crime lab got the gun, it was unfireable because the firing pin was not installed correctly. MO law says that to be guilty of the crime they are charged with, the gun has to be a functioning firearm. Otherwise, they would have to get charged with a lesser crime. The DA claims the gun was intentionally made non-functional after the crime but before it was confiscated. The McCloskeys will claim it was a reassembly error that they did not realize.
However, the DA compounded the problem by ordering the crime lab to disassemble the gun and reassemble it as functional and that is documented. So they tampered with evidence also. They should have left it as they found it and gotten experts to testify about the likelihood of it being made unfireable due to a mistake. I think that one will get thrown out.
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