Parents in US scramble to get bulletproof bags for kids

Before his freshman year at the University of Connecticut, J T Lewis received an unusual gift from his mother: a bulletproof backpack. Lewis, comes from a family shattered by gun violence: His younger brother, Jesse, was killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. When his mother gave him the backpack, he said, she did not have to say a word.
“We just had a mutual understanding,” said Lewis, 19, who is running for a seat in the Connecticut state Senate.
As mass shootings become a fact of life in the US, it’s not just the families of victims who are investing in protective gear. A growing number of companies are offering bulletproof backpacks.
“It’s depressing,” said Igor Volsky, the director of Guns Down America, a gun-control advocacy group. “The market is trying to solve a problem that our politicians have refused to solve.” Demand for bulletproof backpacks surged after the shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018. The shootings in El Paso and Dayton have brought renewed attention to the products.
In the past, some stores have reportedly sold out of the backpacks, which typically cost $100 to $200. Months before the Parkland shooting, a private Christian school in Miami sold protective panels that could be inserted into backpacks, charging $120 for the bulletproof shields. This year, ArmorMe, a personal-defence firm started selling a bulletproof backpack that can unfold into a larger covering. Another company, Guard Dog Security, has been selling bulletproof backpacks since after the Sandy Hook shooting. “It could be the difference between life and death,” said Yasir Sheikh, who runs Guard Dog.
Firms have also been criticised for falsely claiming that their armoured backpacks were certified by the National Institute of Justice, which oversees the body armour used by law enforcement. The agency, part of the US justice department, has not certified, or even tested, the backpacks and has no plans to do so, a spokeswoman said. Sheikh acknowledged that the backpacks were less effective at blocking gunfire from semi-automatic weapons, like the ones used at Sandy Hook. Gun-control advocates say there is no evidence that armoured backpacks would keep kids safe.
“There isn’t a parent in this country that isn’t terrified. These companies are capitalizing on that,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun-control organisation. In recent Twitter posts, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris has held up bulletproof backpacks as a symbol of the broader problem of gun violence. “Parents shouldn’t have to buy a bulletproof backpack for their child just to keep them safe in school,” she tweeted in July.