Pretty good idea and much better than the bullet proof back pack that was marketed to schools.

A few problems. A) all that velocity doesn't just disappear. While it might prevent puncture wounds from bullets hitting it head on, kids are still going to take blunt force trauma, and kids, being smaller, are hurt more than adults by the same amount of damage. B) It's unidirectional protection. bullets ricochet, and some fragment when they hit something. Looking at the pictures of those kids lying there, if I were a nutcase shooter, I'd simply fire right at where the the floor is and let the ricochets chew them up.

If you want to turn schools into armed camps, you'd be better off investing in bulletproof glass and doors and dividers that can lock down sections of the building such that a shooter simply either can't get in, or can immediately be trapped in one small section and prevented from leaving.

Better yet, of course, would be getting guns off the streets, so that would be mass murderers have to try it with knives or bats.

during a tornado drill or an active shooter .

I wasn't sure how I felt about this at first, but reading that it was developed by a Newtown parent put it into a new light. Another layer of protection really can't hurt. We already have buzzers, mousetrap entries, safety drills, etc.

I think it might scare the younger children, though. I would probably tell them it was for a tornado drill instead of a potential shooting event.

The Bodyguard Blanket™ was developed by Steve Walker, a father of two elementary school students who was horrified by the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 20 children and six adults dead.

Read it wrong.

At $1000 a blanket, he stands to make quite a bit of money. Maybe he would consider donating a portion to some worthy cause.

to read it the way you did.

And it says a lot about the state of our nation today.

A retreat to 1950's cold war ignorance that prepares kids to wait to be slaughtered while mistakenly believing they're doing something to keep themselves safe?

Y'know, with a rifle barrel or the shooter's foot.

to every school in the country. It takes machinery to buy , employees to hire etc...

they are exploiting the market of fear. It's wrong to profit from human misery.

Those goofy things won't do shit to make anybody safe beyond the CEO of the company's bank account.

It won't stop a rifle round. Soldiers in the field wear body armor that weighs almost as much as a child. A pistol round fired at such protection in front of a block of clay will leave a dent in it the size of your fist. For a child that kind of blunt force trauma is enough to kill them or cripple them for life.

In the event of an active shooter all those things (that suspiciously resemble sleeping mats for naptime) will be piled in a cloak room somewhere. Imagine twenty kids clamoring to don body armor all at once under fire.

They only offer protection along one axis. The child will have to keep the protection between him/her and the shooter. That will be difficult to do while face down and blind because of the "protection". The shooter could easily outflank them with a few steps around his targets cowering on the floor. It creates a kill zone for the shooter. And don't forget ricochets that can bounce under it and are just as deadly.

I'm sorry if I seem too strident here. I just hate it when corporate assholes indulge in this kind of profiteering. If that sonofabitch wants to sell those things, let him put one on and try to survive an active shooter. This kind of shit is straight out of the nineteenth century. Upton Sinclair is spinning in his grave by now.

I like to believe that the creator of these horrible things had good intentions, but the truth is they won't do anything except waste precious money that schools need for real education, and perhaps give some a false sense of security about surviving a newtown-like incident.

Meanwhile the manufacturer is laughing all the way to the bank, profiting on the FUD that our society is allowing itself to suffer.

It breaks my heart.

is to simply allow prayer and bring God back to the school, because - you know - that works. Bibles for the Kids, maybe with a bullet-proof cover.


That being said, the biggest buyer of these are going to be the Bundy Ranch crowd with visions of crouching behind their portable bunkers firing at law enforcement people.

but truly sad we've come to this point. When the right to carry a gun becomes more important than the right of children to live we need to stop calling America a great country.

"Hold on, there's a shooter... Let's all grab our Kevlar shields!"

What the hell has this world gotten to that this is seen as a sane, rational course of action??

Or do they wear them all the time?

Maybe they make one for the front to wear at the same time?

A vest alone weights about 15lbs... full body armor... what? 45lbs for the back? On a child that weighs 75-100lbs max?

How about we solve the actual problem instead of resorting to snake oil salesmen?

Acknowledging that this is a good idea is also acknowledging that there is a violence problem in schools, which leads to the next question, if you believe there is a problem, why do you feel nothing should be done about guns?

I wish like hell I could leave this country