Twenty Years Gone: Jim Barrett and Dr. John Britton

Twenty years ago today, Jim Barrett and Dr. John Britton were murdered by a religious terrorist.

The clinic where they died was firebombed January 1, 2012 by some homeless jackwagon who'd been watching the weekly terrorist "protests."

The clinic reopened in a different location, in the same shopping center as a Hobby Lobby.

A repost of my 2009 write-up:

On this day in 1994, Paul Hill walked up to a pickup truck in the driveway of a Pensacola clinic and killed Jim Barrett and Dr. John Britton with a shotgun.

I stood in a parking lot across the street with some of the other clinic escorts (Jim was one of ours) for a few hours. The bodies were laid out and covered with sheets while the crime scene guys did their thing.

I never met Dr. Britton; he was one of the volunteers who stepped up when David Gunn was murdered barely a year before.

Jim was a good guy, a sort of grandfather figure. He's buried at Arlington:

www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jbarrett.htm

I'm gonna hoist a drink in his honor sometime today and hope that someday crazy religious douchebags will no longer exist.

And for the rest of us, if you know a guy like Jim, buy him a drink.

Remembering Jim Barrett & Dr. John Britton (7/29/1994)

Hard to believe it was 19 years ago that they were murdered, barely a mile from where I'm sitting. The clinic was firebombed in January of 2012. Bastards finally destroyed the building, but the clinic reopened pretty quickly in new digs.

I'm just gonna repost what I wrote July 29, 2009:

On this day in 1994, Paul Hill walked up to a pickup truck in the driveway of a Pensacola clinic and killed Jim Barrett and Dr. John Britton with a shotgun.

I stood in a parking lot across the street with some of the other clinic escorts (Jim was one of ours) for a few hours. The bodies were laid out and covered with sheets while the crime scene guys did their thing.

I never met Dr. Britton; he was one of the volunteers who stepped up when David Gunn was murdered barely a year before.

Jim was a good guy, a sort of grandfather figure. He's buried at Arlington:

www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jbarrett.htm

I'm gonna hoist a drink in his honor sometime today and hope that someday crazy religious douchebags will no longer exist.

And for the rest of us, if you know a guy like Jim, buy him a drink.

Remembering a Good Man: Jim Barrett

On this day in 1994, Paul Hill walked up to a pickup truck in the driveway of a Pensacola clinic and killed Jim Barrett and Dr. John Britton with a shotgun.

I stood in a parking lot across the street with some of the other clinic escorts (Jim was one of ours) for a few hours. The bodies were laid out and covered with sheets while the crime scene guys did their thing.

I never met Dr. Britton; he was one of the volunteers who stepped up when David Gunn was murdered barely a year before.

Jim was a good guy, a sort of grandfather figure. He's buried at Arlington:

www.arlingtoncemetery.net/jbarrett.htm

I'm gonna hoist a drink in his honor sometime today and hope that someday crazy religious douchebags will no longer exist.

And for the rest of us, if you know a guy like Jim, buy him a drink.

Flashback to 1993, 1994--Abortion Provider Killed

With the murder of Dr. George Tiller this morning (in church--sick irony, there), I'm thinking back to the two murderers here in Pensacola.

Dr. David Gunn was shot in the back by Michael Griffin on March 10, 1993. David was near the back door of one of two clinics in town. Griffin reportedly came up behind him and said or shouted, "Stop killing babies!" before unloading 3 rounds from a nickel-plate revolver. Several hours and several units of blood later, David was gone.

Dr. John Britton and a friend of mine, Jim Barrett, were gunned down a year later, on July 29, 1994, by Paul Hill. Jim had driven out to the airport to bring the Doc to work at the other clinic in town. As they were pulling into the driveway, Hill stepped up to the driver's side of Jim's pickup truck and fired a shotgun point-blank. Jim and the Doc died instantly. Jim's wife was in the back seat. I can still see the two bodies arranged on the driveway near the truck, shrouded. Several of my clinic escort acquaintences stood across 9th Avenue and watched in the aftermath. One woman cried and muttered, "they shouldn't be alone over there...we should go to them."

I started volunteering shortly after John Burt, one of our resident anti-abortion kooks (and now in prison for molesting underage girls, strangely enough) staged an event claiming he was going to bury an aborted fetus on a little piece of land right next to the 9th Avenue clinic (I'll tell his story later). His stunt pissed me off to the point where I joined NOW and volunteered to escort women across the vast distance from their car to the clinic door. That asshole and his buddy Donnie Gratton would stand on scaffolding erected along the back fence of the clinic property and either shout or use a bullhorn to harrass women. These scumbag right-wing religious terrorists are wrong. They harrass every woman who goes into such a place, not knowing or caring beyond their own overinflated egos whether that woman's going for a breast exam, a blood test, a regular checkup, or the Big A.

And it is none of their fucking business.

My attitude on abortion? I don't believe human life is sacred or special. It's only important to humans--and so life is important to that person and those around them. I won't argue that abortion ends a future life.

BUT...I will argue that banning abortion and terrorizing people are wrong. Banning it will not make it stop. It'll make it more expensive, both financially and in lives, because desperate women will still look for and find unscrupulous someones willing to make a few bucks off of them. It will not be the utopia the anti-abortion idiots think things will be--"Oh, once we ban it, everyone will think like we do!"

Idiots.

No, I'd rather have it freely available and performed by competent, licensed medical professionals if only to protect womens' lives--so that they CAN have a kid later on.

I should note that I do not and WILL not accept any argument against abortion, gay marriage, or other social or political or scientific matters if those arguments come from religion. If you have to look it up in your book, looking for quotes; if you have to get your opinion from some preacher; if your main reason for opposing something stems from your religous belief...you have no argument.

I hardly knew David Gunn, outside of the "Hey, how you doing?" sort of thing. His killer got a life sentence, unfortunately.

I knew Jim Barrett. I celebrated when his killer got the needle on September 3, 2003.

Not happy thoughts, no...and I should note that in the wake of these killings, abortions continued. Within hours of Gunn's death, we had volunteers ready to drive or fly into town as needed. Within a week, we had people on the clock.

I wonder how things will unfold in the aftermath of Dr. Tiller's murder.