Whether your kids have already started classes or the first school bell will ring sometime after Labor Day, it’s officially back-to-school season.
And with a new school year comes a fresh assortment of school supplies: Notebooks? Check. Pens and pencils? Check. New water bottle to replace the one your kid managed to lose on the last day of summer camp? Check. Bulletproof insert for your kid’s backpack?
We were surprised when our inbox contained a message advertising a new device from SentryShield, a “maker of tactical protection.” Their new bulletproof backpack insert — lightweight, metal free, and currently available for an “introductory price” of $89.99 — is “engineered to stand between you and tragic situations,” according to the marketing email. (Its “layers of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethelyne” provides “maximum protection against most handgun ammunition,” according to their web site.)
This, we feel, is a sad sign of the times. We are well aware mass shootings, and school shootings in particular, are a tragic and unnecessary problem in American society — even as the U.S. Department of Education is coming under fire for greatly inflating the number of school shootings in the 2015 – 2016 school year.
Of course, even a single death in a school shooting is one too many. After all, every parent wants to send their children to school knowing that, above all, they’ll be safe. But is making your kid’s backpack bulletproof the solution?
What do you think?