Let’s All Hope That Bulletproof Backpacks Don’t Become the Next Trapper Keepers

It’s a wide, dangerous, gun-filled forest out there, and you’d be some kind of irresponsible monster to send your child out into it without first outfitting him or her in a found-pound kevlar-threaded vest, undershirt, and backpack, which can be used both as a carry case for social studies books AND as a ballistics shield. Can you say value?

According to an earlier report from the Associated Press, the Sandy Hook school shooting had the unfortunate side effect of stimulating the free market and prompting an entrepreneurial Colombian factory owner named Miguel Caballero to start manufacturing “bulletproof” kid’s clothes. Though Caballero’s factory has been churning out adult body armor for the past 20 years (for a client list that includes the British Royal family), he only started making bulletproof duds for children when he was inundated with letters from distressed American parents.

According to the AP:

Factory owner Miguel Caballero said he never thought about making protective clothes for kids until requests came in following the deadly attack on Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut last month.

“After the tragedy in Connecticut, we started getting emails from customers asking for protected (clothing) because they were afraid to take their kids to school,” Caballero said.

“We have received messages from all over the United States,” seeking the protective gear, added Giovanni Cordero, the company’s marketing director.

Products include child-sized armored vests, protective undershirts and backpacks with ballistic protection that can be used as shields.

The products are designed for children ages 8-16 years old and cost $150-$600 depending on the complexity of their construction. Each piece weighs 2-4 pounds.

Good’s Yash Wailin greeted news of this burgeoning new industry with the appropriate level of dismay, asking readers earlier today, “Does it make anyone else as sad to read about this as it made me to write this? Do you agree with Caballero that there’s a need for these garments, or would our efforts be better spent elsewhere?” Efforts “elsewhere” might, let’s just say, include restricting the sale of military-grade firearms so that kids don’t have to strap on armor (that, by the by, wouldn’t have been able to save the children at Sandy Hook Elementary, since they were shot at such close range) to their torsos every time they get on the school bus.

I mean, that’s bullshit, isn’t it? Would people really rather live in a world in which kids have to wear kevlar just so that suspicious adults can build armories in their basements and fantasize about becoming Road Warriors after the nuclear apocalypse? Look, if you like the Mad Max trilogy so much, just buy a fucking dune buggy and an Australian cattle dog and call it money well spent.