Back to school US-style ...with a bulletproof bag
THEY’RE the latest in backpack design: Spacious, colourful, lightweight – and bulletproof.
The backpacks are already selling well in the US, where 27 have died this year in two school shootings.
Although popular, the products are proving controversial. Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo presented an item this week in which she stood behind a table displaying the bags, which come with a removable ballistic plate and cost £154.
Her light-hearted interview with Carolina Ballesteros Casas, marketing manager of clothing company MC Armor, drew widespread criticism.
Singer Elly Jackson of La Roux slammed the news show for using her 2009 single Bulletproof at the start of the piece. ‘Using Bulletproof, a song I wrote about relationships, for a piece like this is abhorrent.’
Sales of bulletproof backpacks rocketed in the wake of the shooting which killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February, and the Santa a Fe High School attack in May in which ten died.
Fox reported that the protective clothing market is expected to be worth more than £5billion by 2025. ‘In the US, sadly there’s the gun fact – everybody can have a gun,’ said Miss Ballesteros Casas.