One of the reasons why gun buybacks don't work is because what's being offered is virtually nothing in comparison to what a gun is worth. No criminal is going to accept a $50 gift card to Aldi's in exchange for a gun when he knows he can get that much knocking over a curb store.

So, instead of that, buybacks just get guns from people who represent no threat at all but just want to get rid of their guns and who think they'll sleep better knowing no law-abiding person is now in possession of these unwanted firearms.

It seems some folks in New Orleans want to try a slightly different approach. It's still a buyback, but instead of gift cards or even cash, they're offering something that people might actually want.

Local leaders are trying to get guns off the streets by exchanging them for Xboxes.

The new initiative took place Saturday at the New Hope Baptist Church.

The event was set up by the local gaming community, NOLAGrown, in connection with Councilman Freddie King and members of the city council.

Of course, there's no mention of how many guns were gotten, which is interesting. My guess is that this didn't work as well as organizers hoped. I could be wrong, though.

Those organizers said this was in response to Louisiana's permitless carry law, which makes absolutely no sense at all considering that the people who are a problem--the people they hope to get guns from--were carrying without a permit regularly as it was and are still prohibited from doing so under the new law.

Still, let's look at this for a moment.

I'm going to admit that this is probably a bit more clever than gift cards. As I said, this is something that a lot of people actually want. Assuming it's a current-generation console, this is a potentially good way to reach some of those who are most likely to do something stupid.

Of course, this is also one of those things that I can see some dipsticks deciding to take up burglary in hopes of getting guns just to trade them for Xboxes, which they can either keep or sell at a pure profit.

That's what the Law of Unintended Consequences does. It means a good idea can and probably will backfire in some way and create a situation you never wanted to happen. In this case, it could potentially spark thefts just so people can try and get a free Xbox.

Assuming that it works at all, which we don't seem to know at this point. Now, this is Tuesday, as I write this. This apparently happened on Saturday--note the past-tense verb of "took" to describe when it happened--which means there's been time to count the guns. I mean, it's not trigonometry, which I flunked in high school, but basic counting. Sure, it might get to big numbers, but I'm pretty sure someone there knows their 1-2-3s.

So how many guns were gotten? Five? Five hundred? More than they had Xboxes for? What?

We don't know, and that's kind of telling. 

What's also going to be telling is how this won't have an impact on violent crime in the Big Easy.