If there’s anything that captures the true obscenity that the Second Amendment, the gun lobby and its Republican enablers in the U.S. Congress and on the Supreme Court have led us to, this is it:
Yasir Sheikh, president of Guard Dog Security, a Florida-based company that sells bulletproof backpacks and other protective items, began selling the bags five years ago, after 20 children and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He says that sales have been consistent — not surprising, considering that more than 400 people have become victims of school shootings since then. He also says that the company typically experiences a spike in sales in the days following a mass shooting. “Sometimes we see it instantly, sometimes it’s a few days afterward,” he explains.
People with school age children who witness our now bi-weekly horror of school shootings are naturally grasping at anything they can to try to protect their kid from being shredded into bits of meat and bone by these monstrous weapons provided courtesy of the NRA. So its not surprising that things like this exist, despite their dubious effectiveness. Hey, the kid down the street has one—why shouldn’t yours? Caitlin Moscatello, writing for New York Magazine, captures the current zeitgeist:
But for moms and dads glued to news stories wondering, What if it were my kid texting me good-bye from a classroom, buying a bulletproof backpack provides an
immediate point of action, a grab at any sense of control over the insanity we’re living in.
“Sheikh declined to share sales numbers, but says that the backpacks require little advertising and “tend to be viral products that are liked and shared and commented on quite a bit.”
The backpacks come in “a startling mix of pinks, purples, and distinctly youthful patterns.” Presumably its inventors assume that a mad shooter will have the courtesy to shoot children only in the back, as an AR-15 would easily blow the thing out of a kid’s hands were she to try to use it as a shield:
The bullet from an AR-15 does an entirely different kind of violence to the human body. It’s relatively small, but it leaves the muzzle at three times the speed of a handgun bullet. It has so much energy that it can disintegrate three inches of leg bone. “It would just turn it to dust,” says Donald Jenkins, a trauma surgeon at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. If it hits the liver, “the liver looks like a jello mold that’s been dropped on the floor.” And the exit wound can be a nasty, jagged hole the size of an orange.
That doesn’t deter the sales pitch, though. Here’s Joe Curran, former Army Ranger and President of Bullet Blocker, who was prompted to start making these products after the Virginia Tech massacre:
“I had some old bulletproof vests kicking around, and I cut them up and stuffed them in their backpacks,” he says. “I told them, ‘If something happens, hold this between you and the guy with a gun and hunker down behind it.’”
A Ranger should know better, but hey, it’s capitalism! Prices for the Kevlar-lined packs range from $199-490. His company now has ten employees to meet the burgeoning demand:
Like Sheikh, Curran says there’s often an uptick in sales following a school shooting. “When the Sandy Hook shooting happened in Newtown, we had maybe 20 percent of our sales come from Connecticut in the weeks following,” he says.
Neither Sheik nor Curran know of any instance where their “backpacks” were used in a shooting, so there’s no way to gauge their actual effectiveness in a real, chaotic, panicky environment of a school shooting.
The fact that many parents are feeling compelled to buy these things is a testament to just how far our society has gone down the path of resigning itself to a phenomenon that is unheard of in every other civilized country. The NYMag article includes interviews with parents who agonize over the price tag and whether they are putting their children at risk by not getting such a thing. Some parents, on the other hand, are horrified that such things as bulletproof backpacks even exist, and point to the mental stress caused by just sending your kid to school wearing one:
“Bulletproof backpacks are not at all a solution, but rather an indicator to me of the depth of this problem,” says Sharon Barr Skolnik, a 36-year-old mom of three in Florida. “Our lawmakers are so busy accepting money from the NRA and similar organizations that it clouds their brains as to the real reasons we make laws in this country … I don’t want to have to buy a backpack to protect my kid. I want my kid to just be safe.”
There is a word for this: Insanity.