I happen to believe that everyone should have a gun if they want one. More guns tend to translate as fewer problems with criminals, by and large, but with a few exceptions. Gangs, for example, have plenty of guns and lots of violence. That’s a topic for a different day, though.

For the most part, more guns mean less crime.

However, we can all agree that armed children is a bad thing. They can’t legally have guns, after all, yet far too many have them. They represent a real problem. These are guns that are likely to be used in crime and we all know it.

One New Orleans musician has started his own variation of a buyback to try and get those guns off the streets.

‘Bring me a gun and I’ll give you a trumpet’, promises trumpeter Shamarr Allen in a bid to combat violent gun crime in New Orleans.

In Louisiana, an estimated 49 percent of households currently own a gun and the state ranks fourth highest in gun-related deaths across the nation – many of which can be attributed to young offenders.

That’s why trumpeter Shamarr Allen has come up with a novel idea: exchanging firearms for trumpets.

Titled Trumpet Is My Weapon, his bright initiative hopes to combat gun crime in New Orleans and inspire young people to follow a safer path in life.

Earlier this month, Allen promised via Instagram: “To all the youth in New Orleans, Bring me a gun and I’ll give you a trumpet no questions asked. I’m doing this until I run out of trumpets.”

To help get his exchange program off the ground, Allen set up a Go Fund Me page on 17 July with a fundraising target of $6,500 – and already, he’s exceeded this amount with a current total of $32,728.

At the end of the day, though, this is another buyback and we all know that buybacks don’t really work.

I don’t really expect this one to have much impact on the violent crime rate in New Orleans.

But what it may do, though, is give some kids an out. You see, music is big in New Orleans. Maybe not as big as some of us who don’t live there think, but it’s still a big deal. The trumpet may help some kids find a way out of the criminal life they were headed toward and do something that makes the world a bit better.

Allen’s efforts may not change the world, but they just might change someone’s world, and that’s a pretty good reason to proceed.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues. For one, I’d worry about where the kids get the guns. Stealing Mom or Dad’s gun so they can get a trumpet is bad news, of course. Assuming that risk is mitigated, I have to applaud the effort. No tax dollars are funding it, after all, and it’s targeting a particular group that shouldn’t have guns in the first place.

Sounds like a win for everyone if you ask me.