Ahead of his freshman 12 months at the University of Connecticut, J.T. Lewis been given an unusual reward from his mother: a bulletproof backpack.
Lewis, who will be a sophomore at the college, arrives from a loved ones shattered by gun violence: His more youthful brother, Jesse, was killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. When his mom, Scarlett, gave him the dark-grey backpack, he stated, she did not have to say a term.
“We just experienced a mutual comprehending,” claimed Lewis, 19, who is managing for a seat in the Connecticut condition Senate.
Now he wears the armored backpack on campus mainly because it can make him truly feel safer, even if it signifies he sweats a minimal additional under the bulky load.
“I do not know if it’s heading to have any result,” Lewis mentioned. “But it could if I get shot from behind.”
As mass shootings turn into a tragic fact of life in the United States — at schools, suppliers, videos theaters and residences of worship — it’s not just the people of victims who are investing in protective equipment.
In a dystopian growth, a developing amount of organizations are presenting bulletproof backpacks in back again-to-college profits, marketing them to parents who are determined to shield their kids from gunmen.
“It’s extremely depressing,” said Igor Volsky, the director of Guns Down The usa, a gun-manage advocacy team. “The current market is attempting to resolve for a problem that our politicians have refused to resolve.”
Demand for bulletproof backpacks surged after the capturing at a significant college in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018. With back-to-faculty year approaching, the shootings this weekend in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, have introduced renewed awareness to the products and solutions.
In the earlier, some merchants have reportedly offered out of the backpacks, which usually charge $100 to $200. Months just before the Parkland taking pictures, a personal Christian college in Miami bought protecting panels that could be inserted into backpacks, charging $120 for the bulletproof shields.
This yr, ArmorMe, a personalized-defense firm operate by a former Israeli commando, Gabi Siboni, commenced marketing a bulletproof backpack that can unfold into a more substantial covering.
“The backpack is developed 1st of all to be a extremely classy and good-seeking backpack,” Siboni explained. “And it has panels that safeguard you towards bullets. It will boost your survival possibilities.”
One more company, Guard Pet dog Stability, has been selling bulletproof backpacks given that soon after the Sandy Hook taking pictures. The solutions are out there at Business office Max, Business office Depot and Kmart, and the organization recently released a design that prices much less than $100.
“It could be the variance concerning life and dying,” mentioned Yasir Sheikh, who operates Guard Dog.
In the past, corporations have been criticized for falsely saying that their armored backpacks had been certified by the Countrywide Institute of Justice, which oversees the physique armor used by regulation enforcement. The agency, aspect of the Justice Division, has not certified, or even tested, the bulletproof backpacks and has no strategies to do so, claimed Mollie Timmons, a office spokeswoman.
However, Sheikh stated, Guard Dog’s backpack is created to meet the agency’s Degree IIIA effectiveness common for overall body armor, which would make it resistant to bullets fired from shotguns and handguns. The backpacks are tested at a facility in Oregon, he explained.
But Sheikh acknowledged that the backpacks ended up fewer successful at blocking gunfire from impressive semi-automated weapons, like the ones applied at Sandy Hook. And gun-handle advocates say there is no proof that armored backpacks, nevertheless very carefully examined, would continue to keep children safe throughout a shooting.
“We’re asking children to stand up to gunmen mainly because lawmakers are also worried to stand up to the gun foyer,” claimed Shannon Watts, the founder of Mothers Demand Action for Gun Perception in The us, a grassroots gun-handle corporation. “There is not a mum or dad in this nation that is not terrified. These companies are capitalizing on that.”
Siboni, who operates ArmorMe, mentioned it was unfair to accuse his enterprise of exploiting national fears about gun violence to switch a financial gain.
“Whatever you do, you’re capitalizing on some thing,” he explained. “We are just responding to a will need.”
In several recent Twitter posts, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, a Democratic presidential candidate, has held up bulletproof backpacks as a image of the broader challenge of gun violence in the United States.
“Parents should not have to obtain a bulletproof backpack for their baby just to preserve them safe in school,” she tweeted in July. “This shouldn’t be typical.”
But for Celeste Green, a senior at the Faculty of Charleston in South Carolina, the backpacks look like a needed precaution.
The working day in advance of the taking pictures in El Paso, Inexperienced, 22, acquired that a teenager in her hometown, Columbia, South Carolina, experienced threatened to “shoot up” a local college. When she saw the information, she assumed of her young sister, who is beginning significant college in the fall. Green sent her mother a few videos and hyperlinks with data about bulletproof backpacks.
“Immediately, she was like: ‘Where ought to I start? Where should I search?’” Inexperienced explained. “There was no question.”
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