Parents shopping for school supplies probably haven‘t thought toinclude body armor on their lists, but after recent school shootingsincluding April‘s Virginia Tech massacre, two companies are marketingarmored backpacks and uniforms.
"Back in ‘99 following the Columbine shootings, me and my buddyJoe Curran — both of us are parents of two children — wondered if therewas anything out there in the world to protect children in
The knapsacks each contain a 20-ounce bulletproof plate. Pelonziwouldn‘t disclose what the plate was made from, but said it was notKevlar, the material from which most police bulletproof vests are made.
Pelonzi said the bags would have been effective in defendingusers from the sorts of weapons used in 97 percent of school shootingssince 1999. The bags sell for $175.
Pelonzi said he was a firearms safety instructor and Curran is a former member of the military.
It was still too early to know how many bags they had sold, hesaid, but their Web site received more than 12,000 hits in its firsttwo days.
In a homemade commercial posted on YouTube, a young girl demonstrates how the backpack can beheld in front of the body to fend off a shot. The bags are also seenbeing shot at with various firearms.
Across the Atlantic, the British company Bladerunner respondedto a number of stabbing attacks on schoolchildren by lining the blazersof students‘ uniforms with Kevlar.
"Just in the last week I have heard from parents that problemswith school violence are increasing. Some parents have been saying theyhave to instruct their children to go to school without money, orwithout their mobile phones. Kids have to take off their school ties sothey‘re not attacked," Barry Samms, the company‘s founder, toldABCNEWS.com from the United Kingdom.
Bladerunner, he said, initially began lining hooded sweatshirtswith Kevlar and started applying the process to school uniforms afterit was approached by several parents.
The stab-resistant blazers sell for $230.
But school safety experts aren‘t convinced that sending kids to school with body armor is the best way to protect them.
"There is a huge difference between feeling safer and actually beingsafer," said Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety andSecurity Services. "Ideas like bulletproof backpacks and armingteachers are not the answer."
Furthermore, because weapons are so often concealed in bags,many schools are curbing the use of backpacks in classrooms andhallways. In many high-risk inner-city schools students are required tocarry see-through backpacks.
"Even if kids carried backpacks all day, they wouldn‘t have themwhen sitting at lunch or in class. … You could propose having Kevlarhelmets and flak jackets. It‘s still not going to give parents theguarantee that their children will be safe," he said.
The best way to protect students, Trump said, is to trainchildren and teachers to recognize potentially dangerous people andsituations.
But according to Pelonzi, the bulletproof backpack inventor,teaching kids about safety and providing them with anti-ballistics geararen‘t mutually exclusive.
"We‘re not playing on people‘s fears. We teach our childrenabout all sorts of dangers. We have fire drills and teach them not totalk to strangers, and to stop, drop and roll," he said.
"This is just another level of safety. We want our children to be safe and happy."
school ifthere was a shooting," Mike Pelonzi, co-inventor of My Child‘s Pack, abulletproof backpack, told ABCNEWS.com.
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