Some marketing genius decided that back in December 2006, Oakland was to offer free Guns N' Roses tickets to anyone who turned in a gun to the police. They set two locations over two days where you could drop off your guns and get a pair of GNR tickets. The gun exchange program netted 67 guns, according to a report from the Chief of Police, Wayne Tucker.

To the untrained eye or just those outside of Oakland, it sounds like a failure, but at least the firearms were functional. A gun-for-a-computer swap occurred in 1999 and that netted 200 guns. However, the guns were 200 "old, rusted, inoperable" guns.

The city never ran out of GNR tickets. And this is quite obvious as to why. Without delving into statistics that the majority of gun toting people in Oakland are African American and without getting into the fact that rock is being replaced mostly by hip hop and R&B, let's just pick on Axl.

The concert they were promoting was a Guns N' Roses cover band. Axl Rose doesn't equal Guns N' Roses. He just won the legal rights to the name. If the city of Oakland was able to procure Jay-Z tickets, I believe you would have seen a higher number.

The NovoMetro.com reports on the story.