To its ongoing dismay, the Boston Herald suffers from a rare newspaper affliction: Its Sunday circulation is lower than its daily.

So as a public service:

Herald reporter Marie Szaniszlo filed a doozy of a good ol’ shoe-leather story in Sunday’s Herald, chronicling her one-woman, one-time-only (we’re guessing) gun-buyback program in Dorchester.

Szaniszlo was covering a “non-fatal stabbing” when, after attracting a cadre of youthful neighborhood sleuths, she stopped to watch a few kids wrestling with each other.

I sat on the steps, next to an older boy of about 16, who assured me they were just playing, when one of them pulled out a black, plastic handgun.

“Grab it,” I whispered to the older boy.

He waited for the right moment and snatched it.

“Hey, give me back my gun!” the younger boy yelled. But I’d already stuck it into my bag.

“Some day, someone’s gonna think that’s the real thing and blow your head off,” I said. “Trust me. It happens.”

Szaniszlo eventually collected three more plastic guns in exchange for pizza and sodas all around. Her piece ended this way:

Over the years, I had read and reported a slew of stories of toy guns leading to tragedy. If a pizza-gun buyback program could stop one on a beautiful September day in Dorchester – well, that was a good assignment.

Hey, Marie – that was a good newspaper story, too.