Posted on 08/10/2007 9:01:13 AM PDT by TornadoAlley3
It’s back-to-school time so load up with those pencils, notebooks, rulers and, of course, a bullet-deflecting backpack, if you buy the pitch of the security accessory’s Danvers inventors.
Dads Mike Pelonzi, 43, and Joe Curran, 42, dreamed up the bullet-proof backpack, which also blunts knife attacks, to protect their own children after witnessing the Columbine massacre in 1999.
“It was after seeing what happened in Columbine that we started thinking about this. I’m a parent and so is Joe and we wanted a way of keeping kids safe at school and this is what we came up with,” said Pelonzi, co-owner of MJ Safety Solutions which produces ‘My Child’s Pack’.
The backpacks, which will cost $175, have a super-lightweight bullet-proof plate sewn into the back which weighs no more than a bottle of water. Pelonzi said the material used is a secret.
The plate material meets National Institute of Justice safety standards, said Pelonzi, and during a three-year testing phase, stood up to bullets as well as machete, hatchet and Ka-bar knife attacks.
“We have tested and tested this product and we are very excited about it. We researched every school shooting since 1900 and found that our product is resistant to 97 percent of all bullets used,” added the father of two.
The backpacks weren’t due to go on sale until the start of the school year but Pelonzi brought the release date forward to Friday, days after a Herald review revealed how more than 500 weapons were recovered from Boston’s public schools in the past year.
Boston Public Schools said school chiefs would need to see the product before making a decision on whether kids could use them or not.
“It seems to me that it would not serve our district-wide dress code which says that students cannot wear anything which is threatening or offensive,” said Jonathan Palumbo, Boston Public Schools spokesman.
An MIT associate professor who has researched bulletproof materials said the plate would help, but so too could a school book.
“A large text book could stop a bullet or a knife but it would depend on the energy of the projectile,” said David Roylance, associate professor of materials science and engineering at MIT.
I have found that large textbooks can’t really stand up to much more than a .22
Of course some school districts are banning backpacks you can’t see through because of the exact same type of paranoia.
Maybe if we stopped putting kids on dangerous psychotropic drugs and started using effective measures of discipline again (like spanking), kids wouldn’t need the bulletproof backpacks. Just a thought...
That’s crazy talk! /sarc
No Thinking! Stop that!
Uh-oh the posting police are out again.
Buddy, the link to this article you posted shows that it was put up around 5:00AM !
I dont know about you, but I dont go do random searches for crap that may have moved down off the board by then. Nor do I have the time to do so.
I hate the Posting police.
Get a hobby.
If someone is bothering to read this thread, don’t you thing they might like to see “other takes” on it?
I hate freepnannies that can’t seem to keep their noses out of things that are no concern of theirs.
I don't think it's any of their business if parents want to send their kids to school with bullet proof back pack that can be used as a shield.
It's just too bad it can't deflect all the liberal/ Marxist BS that they are bombarded with.
If you have to outfit your kids with body armor to go to school, maybe it’s time to consider taking them out of school.
Some people don’t even consider that option, which is amazing to me.
If I were one of these fathers, I’d try private school before I wasted my time making bullet proof backpacks.
I'd say it's more a safety measure in protecting them on the way to and from public or private school.
If they weren’t in public or private school, they wouldn’t need protection on the way to and from those schools.
I agree Disambiguator!
$175.00 will purchase a very decent homeschool curriculum. The time spent teaching and learning about one’s child...priceless.
Never fails. Any post having to do with school children always turns into the tired old “homeschool is good, public school is bad”.
I’m trying to figure out how protecting yourself is offensive.
Gunkid, gecko45.. LOL
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