Mark McCloskey Tells Eric Bolling He Was Ready to ‘Kill’ Protester if He Moved Any Closer

One of the Missouri homeowners who brandished a weapon when protesters breached his gated community in June said Friday that he came close to killing one of them.

“One of the people that was wearing body armor and was intentionally being menacing was getting closer and closer up the stairs towards us,” Mark McCloskey said in an interview with Eric Bolling. “And I leaned over to Patti and [said], ‘Look, if that guy moves any closer, I’m going to have to kill him.’ And I took the safety off the rifle, and I was ready to do it. But she said, ‘You’re not killing anybody today,’ and I didn’t. No shots were fired. It had the desired effect. The crowd stayed at bay. Nobody got hurt. Nothing got broken except the gate.”

Mark and his wife, Patricia McCloskey, made headlines when a group of Black Lives Matter protesters broke through the gate leading into their St. Louis community. The two were slapped with felony charges in July for the unlawful use of a weapon, and have become lightning rods in debates about the appropriate limits of protesting this year. The couple spoke to the Republican National Convention on Monday evening.

“There wasn’t really time to think,” McCloskey told Bolling. “It was just kind of a spontaneous reaction. When the crowd beached the gate — and we’re talking hundreds of people coming in, falling over each other, folding the gate down, and then climbing over it and really coming in en masse — I just ran into the house, got the rifle, came out. Patti went inside to call 911, and next thing I know, there she is out in the front yard with a pistol which has been rendered inoperable in the past, and was at the time. And I’m standing up at the edge of the porch with no clean line of fire, and she’s surrounded.

“It was harrowing, but it was certainly not a matter of thinking, ‘Hey, should we make a decision to go inside and lock the doors,'” McCloskey said. “I mean, it was instantaneous, we’ve got to do this now, or our house will be burned, we might be killed, and that’s the end of us.”

Watch above via Eric Bolling’s America This Week.