Court Opinion

ID: 9621995
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:10:50.875516+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:12.118828
License: Public Domain

TOM GRAY, Chief Justice,
dissenting on motion for rehearing.
Today a majority of the Court denies rehearing to consider whether to shoot “at” something you necessarily have to be outside of it. I dissented on original submission and write this as a supplement to my original dissenting opinion and to the denial of the motion for rehearing.
In my original dissenting opinion, I used an example from music; today’s example comes from the movies. As you may recall, near the end of the movie, Men In Black, Tommy Lee Jones, whose character in the movie was “K,” had his weapon taken away from him by an alien, the bug. The bug swallowed K’s weapon. K then enticed the bug to swallow him too. Moments later, as “J,” played by Will Smith, tries to “negotiate” with the bug, you hear the high pitched sound of the weapon as it energizes. J tells the bug “too late” whereupon K, from inside the bug, fires his weapon. The bug explodes. Men in Black (Amblin Entertainment 1997) (motion picture). In this Hollywood moment fives the graphic example that you can be inside something and still shoot “at” it.
Similarly, if Jonah had a weapon, he probably would have shot “at” the “big fish” that swallowed him too. See Jonah 1:17.
*631With these additional comments, I respectfully dissent to the denial of the motion for rehearing.
Justices VANCE and Justice REYNA voting to deny the motion for rehearing do not join this dissenting opinion.