Bulletproof Backpacks
By Albert B. Kelly
Each person has their own moments with a given issue and by that;
I mean crazy moments when they wonder just how far off track we’ve actually
gotten as a society. You would think that such moments would be prompted by
some really big or horrific event, but just as often it’s some bit of minutia
in the daily routine of our lives that jerks us back to sanity and leaves us
shaking our heads.
On the issue of mass shootings and guns, it wasn’t Dayton,
Ohio or El Paso, Texas nor was it the school shooting in Parkland, Florida; but
it was a blurb from NBC’s Kerry Breen that I came across that talked about
bulletproof backpacks for the kiddos as part of their “back-to-school” shopping
list. Apparently sales of these backpacks have jumped some 200 percent over the
last year.
Like any good consumer, I went online to check things out. As
it is for many products, you sort of get what you pay for whether it’s the $99
panel that can be inserted into any backpack or the $300 “Tactical One
Bulletproof Backpack” from Leatherback with 2 panels that transforms into a
vest. There are multiple alternatives between these two price points but
consumers are cautioned that not every product meets the minimum performance
requirements to be ranked as a "Level IIIA" capable of stopping
bullets from a 9-milimeter handgun or Dirty Harry’s .44 Magnum.
So in this season of giving, as a good consumer I got involved
in looking at the selection of bulletproof backpacks all the while thinking how
clever this product is and that it might be something that the grandkids will
need when they start school. That’s when I have my moment and it occurs to me how
completely insane it is that for the sake of avoiding “slippery slopes” around the
Second Amendment, we’ve come to the point where we are equipping our kids with bulletproof
backpacks to increase their chances of surviving a mass shooting at school and
we think nothing of it.
The fact that bulletproof backpacks can seem like a normal
purchase should bother us more than it does and it should greatly disturb us
that we get nothing from Congress at a time when most Americans support common
sense measures like background checks and tighter regulation on the heavy duty
stuff that has nothing to do with sport or hunting. Instead, we get
representation trying to decide if they’re red or blue after sticking a finger
into the wind to see which way the polls are blowing. Pick a side- purple isn’t
an option.
As I write this, there have been more mass shootings in the
country (396) then we’ve had days in the calendar year according to the Gun
Violence Archive (https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/).
Closer to home, we’ve had 11 mass shootings in New Jersey. These stats are
worth considering in both their totality as well as by category. For the
record, GVA defines a mass shooting as a shooting incident with four or more
victims either killed or wounded.
Beyond mass shooting events, the total number of gun-related
deaths this year as I write these words is listed as 37,633 with 14,533 being
homicides, murders, accidents, etc., and the remaining 23,100 being suicides.
The number of children under 11 years old killed by guns is 201 with 456
injured. For teens between 12 and 17 years of age, 746 have been killed via
guns and 2,183 injured. For perspective, picture a sold out Phillies game a
Citizens Bank Park (43,035) and that’s roughly the number of lives lost to guns.
And yet for all of that, the best we can come up with to
offer this generation of children, and probably the next, while we’re avoiding
“slippery slopes” and arguing about what the framers meant by a “well-regulated
militia” is bulletproof backpacks that convert to vests. If that’s as good as
it gets, then we’re simply failing our children and our grandchildren when it
comes to guns and mass shootings.
It’s easy to speculate on how this law or that regulation
wouldn’t have stopped this shooting or prevented that death as if it always has
to be a straight line; it’s quite another thing to acknowledge that we don’t really
know what works because we haven’t tried the most obvious and basic measures that
most Americans favor. But hey, no worries, tis the season for good deals on bulletproof
backpacks.