Denver – Speaking from the city where in 2012, her 24-year-old daughter Jessica Ghawi was among a dozen movie-goers gunned down in a suburban theater,
Sandy Phillips sounded like a woman on a mission.
With the help of pro bono attorneys with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Phillips and her husband Lonnie have filed the first lawsuit against four major online sellers of ammunition and military equipment.
Phillips said they are not asking for monetary damages.
She said instead, they want to change laws and the way those companies do business. However, she said they realize the National Rifle Association is a powerful influence.
Phillips said if not that, "Then at least make Americans aware that there's a problem out there they have no knowledge about whatsoever."
At the news conference announcing the lawsuit, her husband told reporters the couple had asked themselves, "How could someone get their hands on all this equipment to kill?"
The 26-year-old suspect, James Holmes, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and is awaiting trial in December.
Being gun owners themselves, Phillips said she and her husband came to realize how little they knew about federal gun laws, especially those involving the mentally ill.
she said, "When these things started being revealed to us, then we were like, ‘How can that be?'"
Nicole Strong, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said typically, "If you can't possess a gun, you can't own or possess one bullet."
Yet police reported Holmes was armed with thousands of rounds of ammunition that night.
Although Holmes had been diagnosed with mental illness and was under treatment, Strong said, "You have to go before a judge and actually be adjudicated as a mental defective."
Holmes had not been.
Strong said as a result, cases like that make it difficult to prohibit those purchases.
She also said when it comes to ammunition, "A background check is not conducted, nor is a form required" that asks whether a court has found them "mentally defective."
Strong also said online purchases further complicate matters because state laws are involved.
She said federal law supersedes state law, "So while they may be in compliance with state law, they may in violation of federal law."
Phillips said, "As a gun owner in America, you're assuming the same thing my husband and I assumed, that there are stopgaps and measures in place, and there aren't."