In her mother's mind, Vanessa Quinn must not have counted.

"I don't know if anything's going to be done until an illegal weapon hurts somebody that the justice system thinks counts, then maybe they'll do something about it," Sue Antrobus said. "As Vanessa's mother, Vanessa counted."

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday denied a request by the Trolley Square massacre victim's parents to be legally declared "crime victims" of the man who sold the gun to Quinn's killer. An attorney for Ken and Sue Antrobus told the Deseret Morning News that they are now considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"To clear up what I perceive are some gray areas in the law," Greg Skordas said Friday.

At least one 10th Circuit judge blames federal prosecutors in Utah for failing to provide Quinn's parents with evidence they needed to prove a connection between the gun sale and their daughter's murder.

On Feb. 12, Sulejman Talovic, 18, went on a shooting rampage at the Trolley Square mall. He killed five people — including the 29-year-old Quinn — and wounded four others before dying in a shootout with police.

Eight months earlier, Talovic bought a .38 Special from Hunter for $800. Federal authorities have said that Hunter, 20, thought the gun was going to be used in a robbery. Hunter's lawyer has argued that there is no way the young man could have known what crime Talovic was going to commit.

In an interview with the Deseret Morning News from her home in Cincinnati just after the ruling was handed down, Antrobus said Hunter may not have pulled the trigger — but when he sold Talovic the weapon, he became a part of the crime.

"When somebody knows it's going to be used in a crime and sells it anyway ... I don't know how he sleeps at night," she said.

In its ruling, the 10th Circuit judges were sympathetic to the Antrobus' request, but said they had failed to show themselves as a direct victim to the shooting through the actual sale of the gun. Under the Crime Victims' Rights Act (CVRA), a crime victim is defined as "a person directly and proximately harmed as a result of the commission of a federal offense."

To find for the Antrobuses, the judges wrote they would have to determine that selling a gun to a minor is a direct legal link to any resulting third-party injury. While the panel was not willing to got that far, they did concede that this area of the law is "not well-developed and is evolving."

In a concurring opinion, 10th Circuit Judge Timothy Tymkovich said the process failed Quinn and her parents.

"We live in a post-Columbine High School massacre world. In that world, juveniles are willing to procure guns and use them to commit violent, horrific crimes. In this case, the previously unthinkable act of random killing took place in a mall in Salt Lake City. Sulejman Talovic was the shooter and he used a handgun and shotgun to kill five people. One of the murder weapons was procured from Mackenzie Hunter, and used to kill Vanessa Quinn. I write separately because the process in this case failed to adequately support the rights of crime victims such as Ms. Quinn as guaranteed by the CVRA," the judge wrote.