Parents, schools hoping to make kids bulletproof.
Back-to-school lists now include armored inserts for backpacks
Maya Rockafellow checked off a list of back-to-school supplies as she readied her 6-year-old son, Graham, for first grade as this year’s summer vacation entered its final weeks.
Classroom supplies? Check. Backpack? Check. Bulletproof backpack panel? Check.
Alarmed by the fatal shootings of 17 in February at a Parkland, Florida, school and similar killings elsewhere, the Shelby Township, Michigan, mother says she’s taking extra precautions to keep her only child safe.
Rockafellow says she was sold after seeing a television mention the $99 bulletproof backpack panels advertised by BulletSafe, a security company based in Troy, Michigan.
“For me, the cost is nothing compared with having a small bit of comfort that he will have something on him for protection,” she said of her son.
As schools across the nation prepare for the new educational year, parents, students, teachers and school officials are keeping bulletproof protection and gun safety in mind, along with computers, books, lesson plans and learning.
Several safety companies said in February that they had seen a jump in sales immediately after the Parkland tragedy. Although the spike has moderated, they say 2018 sales are higher than last year. And, in a sign of mainstream success, two national retail chains are selling bulletproof backpacks.
Intruder-resistant glass
“There are very few places in America left where people still think they’re safe from gun violence. That’s disappearing,” said Christopher Kapiloff, one of three partners at School Guard Glass, a Massachusetts-based safety company.
That realization has spurred sales of the firm’s intruder-resistant glass. It won’t necessarily stop bullets. However, School Guard Glass’ testing shows the product will remain intact – keeping a shooter outside and students, teachers and other school personnel safely inside – long enough for police and emergency crews to reach the scene.
Bulletproof backpacks
Sanford, Florida-based Guard Dog Security produces bulletproof ProShield II backpacks.
Sales of BulletSafe’s bulletproof backpack panels are up approximately 40 percent from 2017, company President Tom Nardone estimated. One of the product’s selling points is the ability to move the panels from an older backpack to a newer one.
“They seem to sell very well to parents of students who are going to college in the big city, is how I like to describe it,” Nardone said. “All their fears kind of combine in that their kids are leaving, plus the kids are going away to someplace that’s certainly more dangerous than Smallville, USA.”
Do it yourself
As a high school student in Somerset, Wisconsin, Justin Rivard responded to his shop teacher’s challenge about improving school safety by creating a steel-plates-and-rods device that prevents an intruder from opening a school’s inward-opening doors.
Now he’s in the U.S. Army, undergoing basic training during recent weeks at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. His father, Brian Rivard, is running the business, taking orders and selling his JustinKase device to a growing list of schools.
One of the devices had been sent to Santa Fe High School in Texas, where nine students and a teacher died in a May shooting. A buyer had bought the unit for her niece, Rivard said. However, a shipping issue prevented the delivery. If that hadn’t happened, “there would have been one in that school at the time of the event,” he said.