Why haven't we tried this already?

I read an article this morning where Mexico will trade you an Xbox for your gun. If its a larger caliber or machine gun, they'll trade you a computer complete with a legal version of Windows installed. You can read the article here.

While this probably isn't a long term solution, and you probably won't see any of the crime syndicates trading in their weapons, it just might do the trick at stopping impulse crimes by street thugs. Some boundaries would have to be imposed if we implemented a similar law in the U.S. to prevent people from abusing this system by trading in cheap guns bought days prior for an Xbox. But I think a small financial loss due to a law such as this would probably be preferable to more law enforcement requirements if it can help lower non organized crime even a few percent. Would it work, who knows, but I think it'd be worth a try here as well.