'Gun free' Chicago is bleeding out

June 25, 9:25 AMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

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We looked yesterday at efforts to spread the draconian gun laws of Chicago and Washington D.C. to the rest of the country--President Obama's "what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne" notwithstanding.  Forget for a minute that as president (and in his last position as a United States senator), Obama deals with federal laws, which would apply in both Chicago and Cheyenne.  Instead, let's take a look at how well Chicago's gun laws "work."

So well, actually, that the city is literally running out of blood.

There is a real emergency for a county hospital emergency room. The uptick in violence is literally draining the blood supply. And as CBS 2's Pamela Jones reports one specific blood type is running dangerously short.

The hospital in question is Chicago's John H. Stroger Hospital, where many victims of Chicago violence are treated.

The blood bank showed us the eight units of O-negative blood that are left. Only three of the units are designated for trauma patients, though. Any more outbreaks of violence on the streets pose a threat here.

"Tonight we may be in a very tough situation," Dr. Dennis said. "Because we're that short on O-negative blood."

There are, of course, many reasons that have nothing to do with violence that could contribute to a blood shortage.  This being Chicago, though, we can mostly rule those out.

Dr. Dennis says the reason for the shortage is the high numbers of victims of shootings and other violent crimes who come to Stroger Hospital for life-saving treatment.

"We see probably an average of between 10 and 15 people who get shot or stabbed every night," Dr. Dennis said.

Ten to fifteen shootings and stabbings every night, at one hospital? Baghdad might be safer than that.

This is the city with the most restrictive gun laws in the nation.  All guns must be registered--and re-registered annually--with the Chicago Police Department.  The vast majority of semi-automatic firearms, and all handguns, are "unregisterable" (and thus illegal), unless they were already registered in 1982 (and every year since then).

And yet the city is bleeding to death.

The forcible citizen disarmament advocates argue, of course, that the problem isn't with Chicago's draconian gun laws, but rather with gun laws everywhere else not being draconian enough (so much for "what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne"), thus undermining Chicago's laws.  The people making those claims tend to try to avoid the question of why the violence is so much worse in Chicago than in the places whose "lax gun laws" supposedly afflict Chicago.

Forcible citizen disarmament doesn't "work" in Chicago or Cheyenne, and the bloody proof of that can be found in Chicago.