KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Want to buy a gun without a background check and waiting period? The opportunity is as close as your morning paper.

KMBC's Bev Chapman reported that if you buy a gun from a licensed dealer, you must fill out forms designed to make sure you are someone legally entitled to own it -- someone who is not a convicted felon, domestic abuser or mentally ill.

But if you buy that same gun through the want ads, there are no questions asked. It is all perfectly legal, but critics said that it is a loophole that could cost someone their life.

"It was terribly scary because I knew I was going to die," Pat Gallagher said.

Gallagher said that she will never forget the day eight years ago when she was robbed at gunpoint at a stoplight at 54th Street and Holmes Road.

"He just raised the gun and stuck it in my neck," Gallagher recalled.

But what really scares her these days is what she said she sees in the classifieds -- guns, guns and more guns for sale by unlicensed dealers.

"It's too easy," Gallagher said.

So easy she bought some guns at a garage sale that advertised guns, along with clothes, tools and kids stuff, Chapman reported.

"It was probably 45 minutes between the time when I read the ads and had the guns in my car," Gallagher said.

There is nothing illegal about this and nothing illegal about drawing attention to the fact, as one ad does, there is no background check required.

"That's just inviting people who have something to hide," Gallagher said.

"Some people have privacy issues with that. They don't want to be on any kind of government list," Scott Hattrup said.

Hattrup is an attorney and lifetime National Rifle Association member. He said that the majority of people who shop for guns in the paper are just looking for bargains.

"These are perfectly law-abiding folks, professors, hunters, sportsmen," Hattrup said.

Chapman said Hattrup is talking about people who could easily pass a background check.

But that was not the case for Benjamin Smith, who went on a Fourth of July rampage in Indiana and Illinois in 1999. He shot 11 people, including graduate student Won Joon Yoon and Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Birdsong. A licensed dealer refused to sell Smith a gun because he was under a restraining order. So he got one through a want ad.

Mark Williams of Brandenton, Fla., did the same thing in April. A convicted felon under a court order for domestic abuse, he bought a gun he saw in the local newspaper. Prosecutors said that he used the gun to kill his estranged wife, Raquel, in front of her 9-year-old daughter.

Last month, the newspaper that ran that ad, The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, stopped accepting classifieds from unlicensed gun dealers.

The Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Dallas Morning News, and Philadelphia Inquirer are among the newspapers that have also tightened their gun-ad policies.

"There's no way you can control people through the simple process of removing classified ads for guns," Hattrup said.

Hattrup said that such a policy will simply make guns more expensive for hobbyists and people who buy them for sport.

A national survey of private-gun ownership estimates 60 percent of all gun sales are made through licensed dealers. Chapman reported that 40 percent, about 5.5 million, are sold through unlicensed sources, like gun shows, auctions, and garage sales that are advertised in the newspaper.

"We're supposed to be so concerned about safety and terrorism. Anybody can get a gun and it's way too easy," Gallagher said.

Chapman said that there is a national campaign to close this so-called newspaper loophole. Organizers sent a letter to the president and publisher of The Kansas City Star, Art Brisbane. He declined an on-camera interview with KMBC, but did release a statement saying that the The Star's policy and practices are guided by the law and that's how they plan to continue. If the law were to change, Brisbane said that they would quickly recognize that and change its policy.

To date, 16 major daily newspapers and suburban newspapers have changed their policies -- many in response to the national campaign.