Ohio Judge ambushed by gunman, returns fire with concealed carry.

Ohio Judge Joseph Bruzzese. Washington Post/AP

A judge was ambushed by a gunman in Ohio and, along with a probation officer, shot and killed him. Washington Post. The Judge, Joseph Bruzzese, fired five rounds at the attacker and may have hit him after the attacker charged him and opened fire. The attack took place in Stuebenville, the location of the infamous rape case. Shockingly, the attacker, Nathaniel Richmond, is the father of one of the suspects convicted in that case. There doesn't appear to be any link between the suspects son and this case and though the suspect had criminal cases before Judge Bruzzese, it is unclear what the motive was. Bruzzese was injured in the attack but is expected to survive. 

My Comment:

Another example of concealed carry saving a life. Though it is unclear if Bruzzese was the one to take the suspect down as there was a probation officer returning fire as well, it's clear that having armed people around saved this judge. He may have saved his own life, or the probation officer may have, but either way he lived because a good guy with a gun was there. 

It's unclear to me if the probation officer was carrying in the course of his duty or was doing so as a private citizen. According to Ohio state law, probation officers can carry if they pass a safety course (Section C). From what I can gather it's optional but this incident makes a good case that it should be required. 

I am not surprised that a judge would be carrying a gun. They have a job that basically requires them to make enemies. Judges make life changing decisions every day and it's not surprising that a lot of people would be upset with them, just for doing their jobs. Actual attacks on judges are rare due to the respect most of society has for them, but there are a few crazies out there that would attempt an attack like this. 

The suspect in this case has a pretty poor pedigree. His son, Ma'lik, was involved and convicted in the Stuebenville rape case. That case was pretty horrible and was one of the few media cases that actually lived up to the hype in terms of how bad it was. He was convicted because he digitally penetrated a passed out drunk girl.

Still, it doesn't seem like his son's conviction for rape had anything to do with this case. So what was the motive? Unclear. It does appear that he had a few cases under Bruzzese and that might be enough. I don't want to speculate too much but it could have been anything from a ruling he disagreed with to just the fact that he was the judge that was involved in his cases. It's hard to tell without a confession and with the suspect dead we might never know. 

An attack on judges is extremely rare. This is due in part to their popularity. Most people seem to respect judges and very few people have a visceral hatred of them that the police, legislators and the media get. An attack on a judge isn't likely to find any defenders.

The local officials involved in this case compared it to the Alexandria shooting targeting members of congress. I am not sure that comparison is apt. Though both incidents targeted elected officials, the motive in the cases are different. The Alexandria shooting was a politically motivated terrorist attack that was designed as a decapitation attack on Republican leadership. Though we don't know the motivation for the Stuebenville attacker, it seems very unlikely to have been done for political reasons. 

No matter what though it seems clear that concealed carry helped in this case. Had the judge and the probation officer been unarmed there is no question that the judge would have died. And since we don't know what the attackers further intentions were, more people could have died. There is also the possibility that the suspect in this case could have fled if he hadn't been shot. Instead he was the only one to die and we even managed to avoid the expense of a trial. That's a good outcome and the only downside is that the judge was injured in the attack.