The St. Louis couple pardoned for aiming guns at Black Lives Matter protesters want their guns back, but the city won't give them up

• The Missouri Senate candidate who waved his gun at protestors wants his guns back after being pardoned.

• The city of St. Louis, however, said that Mark McCloskey is not entitled to the weapons due to his original guilty plea.

• An official from the city counselor's office said the guns should have already been destroyed by now due to a court order.

The city of St. Louis is declining to return the guns that were taken from Mark and Patricia McCloskey in 2020 after they waved the firearms at Black Lives Matter protestors in their neighborhood.

The couple originally pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault in June 2021, but were pardoned by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson in August 2021.

Mark McCloskey, a Republican Senate candidate, filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri and city of St. Louis to restore his ownership of the guns in late 2021.

He argued that because of Parson's pardon, he and his wife are entitled to receive the $872.50 they were originally fined along with their weapons.

But in a motion filed on Monday, counsel for the city said the governor's pardon "did not supersede or displace the finding of guilt or order of forfeiture of the weapons, defendants' continued possession of the weapons is not wrongful and Mr. McCloskey is not entitled to their immediate possession."

The counsel said that because of Mark McCloskey's guilty plea, the city of St. Louis has no plans to return the firearms.

Mark McCloskey previously said in a court filing that the two guns, a Bryco .380-caliber pistol and a Colt AR-15 rifle, are cumulatively valued at $1,900.

Despite being seized in 2020 and a court order to destroy the firearms, the guns are still under the possession of the city's police and sheriff's department.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Robert Dierker of the City Counselor's Office said in a virtual hearing on Wednesday that Mark McCloskey is a "beneficiary of bureaucratic, I want to say, ineptitude" because the weapons have yet to be dismantled.

"But in any event," Dierker said, "it's fortuitous that the weapons still exist."

According to Missouri's court docket, a jury trial over the guns is scheduled for McCloskey's case on February 22, 2022.

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