Bulletproof Backpacks Are A Stomach-Churning Back-To-School Trend In US

While harder to find in Canada, bulletproof backpacks do appear to be available at some retailers such as Cookware Canada, online at ebay Canada, and for a price, bullet-proof inserts for kid’s backpacks can be shipped internationally from the U.S. via Etsy (where, by the way, they are a best-seller).

Imagine how terrified parents in the US must be, now that bulletproof backpacks are on their shopping lists, right next to spiffy new shoes and a cool new lunchbox. 

“It’s incredibly depressing,” Igor Volsky, the director of Guns Down America, a gun-control advocacy group, told the New York Times. “The market is trying to solve for a problem that our politicians have refused to solve.”

A Deadly Weekend in The US

A pair of horrific mass shootings in the U.S. left 31 people dead this weekend. 

In El Paso, Texas, the death toll creeped upward to 22 Monday from the shooting two days earlier at a Walmart store, with two additional victims succumbing to injuries. Police zeroed in on a racist screed posted online before the shooting to try to link it to the suspect.

In Dayton, Ohio, even more questions remained about what spurred the suspected shooter to target a popular nightlife stretch in an attack that left the suspect’s sister among the dead.

The shootings have left parents in a panic as kids are set to return to school in September.

“I shouldn’t be afraid to send my child to school. My boy starts kindergarten and the first thing in my mind is should I buy a bulletproof backpack … I’m so sad,” one person wrote on Twitter.