While in many countries around the world children and their parents focus on choosing the backpacks they like best because of the colors, sizes or designs in which their favorite animated characters appear, in the United States the situation is extremely different. Bulletproof backpacks for schoolchildren are the most popular.
Demand for bulletproof backpacks increased after a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018. Now that the back-to-school season is coming, the recent shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, which caused 32 deaths, have generated renewed attention on these products, The New York Times reports.
In an undesirable development, a growing number of companies are selling bullet-proof backpacks in back-to-school sales, marketing them tp parents who are desperate to protect their children from firearms attacks.
Some reports show that in some stores the bulletproof backpacks which cost $100 to $200 dollars, have been sold out. Months before the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, a private Christian school in Miami, also sold protective panels that could be inserted charging $120 for the bulletproof shields.
Roman Zrazhevskiy of ReadyToGoSurvival.com, headquartered in Austin, Texas, told the Houston Chronicle that his company has seen a large increase in bullet-proof backpack orders over the past few days.
“We normally sell 100 units a month, but we have sold 300 units in the last few days,” said Zrazhevskiy, who also said that most of his customers are in Florida, California and New York.
This year, ArmorMe, a self-defense company run by Gabi Siboni, a former soldier in Israel, began selling a bullet-proof backpack that can unfold into a larger covering.
Another company, Guard Dog Security, has been selling bulletproof backpacks shortly after the Sandy Hook Elementary Schoo shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. The firm recently released a model that costs less than $100.
Yasir Sheikh, Guard Dog Security director, acknowledged that backpacks were less effective at blocking gunfire from powerful semiautomatic weapons, like the ones used in Sandy Hook.
Senator Kamala Harris of California, a Democratic presidential pre-candidate, said bulletproof backpacks are a symbol the broader problem of gun violence in the United States. “Parents shouldn´t have to buy a bulletproof backpack for their child just to keep safe in school. This shouldn’t be normal,” she posted on Twitter.
Translated by: José Espinoza
Noticias Newswire
