Bulletproof backpacks won’t always protect
Gear doesn’t resist bullets from an assault weapon
Even as sales soar for bulletproof backpacks since the Parkland school shooting, some industry experts are quick to point out they are not a solution to keeping schoolchildren safe from an active shooter.
If they were, 17-year-old Sarah Schmidt would have been wearing one on that Feb. 14 afternoon, according to her father, Hoyt Schmidt, an executive with ballistic protective products maker Point Blank Enterprises. Schmidt’s daughter was in the freshman building for a math class at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and survived the shooting that left 17 students and faculty dead.
His Pompano Beach-based company, which makes bulletproof vests and other body armor for military, police, federal agencies and corrections officers, does not make bulletproof backpacks for a reason, he said.
“Don’t you think, of all people, I would want to do something?” said Hoyt Schmidt, a former law enforcement officer who is now executive vice president of commercial business for Point Blank. “We’ve had discussions in the past and then it came around again [after the Parkland shooting].”
But most bulletproof backpacks can only resist bullets from handguns or pistols, not an assault weapon. “If [a shooter] has an AR-15, it won’t do any good,” he said, referencing the Parkland shooter’s weapon.
To resist a rifle’s bullets, a backpack would need hard armor — a rifle plate — which would make them too heavy for most students to carry, he said. A backpack with a 10x12-inch rifle plate would weigh 3 to 10 pounds, he said. “It’s going