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A judge on Monday heard arguments in Trolley Square victim Carolyn Tuft's lawsuit against the pawn shop that sold a gun to shooter Sulejman Talovic.

Talovic wounded Tuft and killed her 15-year-old daughter, Kirsten Hinckley, with a pistol-grip shotgun. Tuft's attorneys argue Sportsman's Fastcash illegally sold the weapon to the 18-year-old Talovic.

Daniel Vice, senior attorney with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told 3rd District Court Judge Glenn K. Iwasaki federal law has been clear for four decades that the weapon Talovic used cannot be sold to anyone under 21.

"This is the type of gun the courts have said it's a weapon of mass destruction," Vice said. "It's a pistol-grip weapon. It is meant to be fired from the waist. It's not a hunting weapon. Its use is for exactly this type of purpose: killing lots of people at close range."

Armed with the shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol, Talovic walked into Salt Lake City's Trolley Square mall on Feb. 12, 2007, and gunned down nine shoppers. Five people were killed and four injured before police fatally shot Talovic.

Attorney J. Michael Hansen, who represented the pawnshop, asked Iwasaki to dismiss the lawuist. He argued the pistol-grip shotgun didn't qualify for the federal restriction and instead was a shotgun legally sold to an 18-year-old.

The weapon is designed so that it may also be used with a shoulder stock, Hansen said. Talovic did not buy a shoulder stock, but when something is designed and intended to be shot from the shoulder it is legally a shotgun, Hansen argued.

"It makes no sense saying that it is illegal to sell it only with a gun grip, when you can buy the receiver alone," Hansen said, showing the court images of how the gun is designed to have removable parts.

Tuft's lawsuit claims the pawn shop should have known Talovic intended to use the gun in a crime. But Hansen pointed to the conclusions of a police task force in saying his client should not be held responsible for one of the worst crimes in Utah history.

"The conclusion [of the task force] was unanimous. No one believed the violent act could have been predicted," he said.

The clerk who sold Talovic the gun, Westley Wayne Hill, pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor for failing to record Talovic, from Bosnia, as a resident alien. He received one year of probation and a $500 fine. As part of a plea deal, prosecutors dropped a felony charge of selling a weapon to an unauthorized person.

Tuft attended Monday's hearing with other members of her family.

"I just feel guns should not be sold illegally," Tuft said. "We need to make that clear to people. There needs to be punishment for those who do."