Shootings have prompted bullet-resistant backpacks
NEW YORK — Companies like Guard Dog Security, TuffyPacks and Bullet Blocker are peddling bullet-resistant backpacks for children in time for the back-to-school shopping season. But critics argue they are using tragedy as a marketing opportunity and exploiting parents’ worst fears.
Safety is high on the minds of many parents, especially after two back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio that left 31 people dead.
“Times have changed,” said Yasir Sheikh, founder and president of Skyline USA, which makes Guard Dog Security products like pepper spray and stun guns and started offering bullet-resistant backpacks called ProShield Scout for children last year. “Our product is in response to that. It’s a sad reality.”
Sheikh said the bullet-resistant backpacks are very popular and sold out several times after the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting that left 17 people dead.
Steve Naremore founded Houston-based TuffyPacks in late 2015 after his daughter, a fourth-grade teacher, told him about the frequency of active shooting drills for her students. His company produces some bullet-resistant backpacks but the bulk of his business is in removable ballistic shields that are inserted in backpacks.
Naremore says his backpacks could be the difference between suffering “lethal versus nonlethal” injuries.
“It acts as a defensive shield, “said Naremore, noting sales of the shields tripled in the days after the mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso last week that killed at least 22 people.
The backpacks don’t come cheap. TuffyPacks’ shields range in price from $129 to $149. Skyline’s ProShield Scout backpacks are priced at $119, although it’s less than the adult version that tops at $199.
The backpacks also don’t protect against military-style weapons, which were used in several mass shootings including Parkland as well as Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, in which a gunman killed 20 children and six educators in 2012.
Greg Shaffer, a former FBI agent and an expert in domestic terrorism, said, “I just don’t think that for the money and the extra weight that it is much more effective in protecting kids,” he said.
Still, the makers of bulletresistant backpacks have tapped into a fear that is real. And for parents feeling helpless and looking for an answer, the backpacks provide them with one.