In response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14th, 2012 sales of bullet proof backpacks for kids went through the roof, crashing the website and draining the inventory of A Salt Lake City, Utah, company called Amendment II. The company’s Ballistic Backpack retails for $300 USD. While many of the liberal media outlets are quick to point out the backlash from people who claim that Amendment II is trying to capitalize on the Sandy Hook tragedy very few have included Amendment II‘s response to the claim in their stories.

“We do not want to sensationalize this any more than it already is,”  said Derek Williams, director of sales and marketing for Amendment II. “The fact of the matter is, in today’s world, this need exists and if we have the technology to protect people, why would we not allow them to purchase it?”

Williams also pointed out that the products have been available for months before the Sandy Hook tragedy. Williams says the company has received numerous threatening and “disturbing”  calls, even from as far away as Italy.

While we at Stalking Zombies tend to think that having a kid suit up in body armor and be on constant alert for the next nutcase with a gun would be over the top and probably harmful to the child’s state of mind, throwing a sheet of soft body armor (that weighs less than a pound) in your child’s backpack seems like a reasonable way to give parents a little piece of mind. The kid doesn’t even need to know the armor is there. Of course schools have fire and emergency drills all the time, including drills involving unauthorized people on campus. So what’s wrong with teaching your kid to take cover behind whatever is available including their backpack? There is a difference between paranoid and prepared.