Do Kids Need Bulletproof Backpacks?
What I learned when I dug into the data and talked to a gun violence expert.
A few months ago, ScaryMommy ran a story titled “Bulletproof Backpacks Are Becoming The New ‘Must-Have’ Back-To-School Item,” based in part on an Insider article that reported that bulletproof backpack sales spiked after the Uvalde massacre.
Then, a former student of mine shared this popular Instagram reel from comedian Gwenna Laithland (@MommaCusses) in which she discusses her decision to buy her daughter a bulletproof backpack insert and a blood capsule — so that when her daughter is in an active shooter situation, she can, in Laithland’s words, “bite down on the blood capsule, spit it out, and play dead.”
I’m disgusted that our country has chosen to put parents in this situation — a situation in which we feel that our children need bulletproof backpack inserts and blood capsules to stay safe at school. I’m disgusted, I’m heartbroken, and I’m angry.
There’s no question that American kids aren’t nearly as safe at school as they should be. But I have found myself wondering whether bulletproof backpacks and backpack inserts are really, truly, a good idea. I can’t help but wonder whether their benefits — the protection they might provide in the very small chance that a particular child ends up in a school shooting situation — will outweigh their potential costs, which could include kids thinking and worrying about school shootings every time they look at their backpack. (Not to mention that these products are hella pricey. Bulletproof backpack inserts sell for between $130 and $600).
To find out, I dug into the available data, and I also reached out to Jaclyn Schildkraut, a criminal justice researcher at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego, who is the interim executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium. You may remember Dr. Schildkraut from my newsletter on lockdown drills.
First, I think it’s important to assess just how likely it is that a child could get shot at school. No question, school shootings happen far too frequently, because they should *never ever ever* happen. But statistically, they are still very much an anomaly in terms of how likely they are to affect an individual child. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 54.2 million children enrolled in public or private K-12 schools in 2021. Education Week, which maintains a school shooting tracker (again: how did we get here?) reported that in 2021, there were 12 students killed in school shootings — a number that number has more than doubled, to 25, in the first eight months of 2022. If this year’s disturbingly high numbers continue, we could expect 38 deaths total in 2022.
Using this year’s numbers to predict future probability, that means we’re roughly looking at 38 kids out of 54.2 million who might die in a school shooting in a particular year — less than one per million. To put that into perspective, I compared that risk to the risk that a child will die in a car crash in a given year. According to the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, 1053 kids aged 14 and under died in car crashes in 2019 out of a total of 60 million kids in that age group living in the U.S — about 17.5 kids per million. To make a very rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, your kid is roughly 25 times more likely to die in a car crash this year than to be killed in a school shooting.
In sharing these statistics I’m not trying to downplay the horror of school shootings. They are devastating, they are awful, and they are far too frequent. But if I’m a parent trying to decide whether it makes sense for my child to wear safety gear to school every day, I think it is important to understand the chance that my child will need to use that gear, and how that risk compares to other risks we face every day.
It’s unlikely, then, that your kid is going to be shot at in school. If they are shot at, though, how useful might these contraptions be? In short, we don’t really know. As Schildkraut told me, there’s never been a controlled study to test how well they work. But “even basic logic suggests they are useless,” she told me. For a bulletproof backpack or insert to save a child’s life, that child would need to be wearing it or shielded behind it when the shooting happens, and the bullet would have to strike only the backpack, which is unlikely. Plus, she added, “there are no examples to my knowledge where anyone has been protected by a bulletproof backpack or other product in a shooting.”
Making matters worse, anecdotal evidence suggests that these products might not work well at all. In 2019, a firearms instructor with the Los Angeles Police Department put a bulletproof backpack to the test. He attached the backpack to a mannequin and then shot at the backpack from 15 yards away, a distance he said most school shooting victims are shot from. The backpack protected the mannequin when shot with a 9mm pistol and with a .45-caliber handgun, which is good. But shots fired from an AR-15, the same semi-automatic rifle used in the Uvalde and Sandy Hook massacres, went through the back panel, punctured the mannequin, and then exited through its back.
(These contraptions probably don’t work because many bulletproof backpacks and inserts are marketed as being “tested to Level IIIA specifications” — this refers to Department of Justice criteria — when protection from military-grade weapons requires Level IV specifications.)
There’s another very important consideration parents should keep in mind, too, Dr. Schildkraut said: These products are likely to incite anxiety. When a parent tells their child they need to go to school with a bulletproof backpack, “it suggests that parents don’t think schools are safe,” she said. As I wrote in a previous newsletter, it’s imperative that we reassure our kids that they are safe at school (even when we’re not convinced of that ourselves). That’s because when kids persistently feel unsafe, they are more likely to become depressed, anxious and suicidal.
Dr. Schildkraut explained to me that these backpacks and inserts are the latest products being marketed as part of a massive school shooting protection industry that banks on parents’ and teachers’ fears. Put another way, companies are just looking to make money off of us and our worries. “Solutions that are touted as being the next prevention or life-saving device have no evidence to suggest that they can do either or both of those things,” she said.
All this said, I want to emphasize that I do not, for one second, judge anyone who has bought bulletproof backpacks or other protective products for their kids. We’re all terrified on behalf of our children, we are looking for ways to ease our fears, and companies are marketing these products as live-saving devices. I’ve thought about buying these things myself — why is why I decided to dig into the issue here. Given what I’ve learned, though, I do not think they are a worthwhile purchase. If you’re wondering what evidence-based steps you should take to keep your kids safe from gun violence, read this newsletter I wrote a few months ago instead.
Related posts:
In last week’s Well newsletter for The New York Times, I wrote about misophonia — when certain sounds, like chewing or sniffling, drive you insane. Apparently it was highly popular on social media! Check it out here.
This Saturday, September 17, I’ll be a featured author at the Albany Book Festival! I’ll be on a Parenting Panel at 1pm ET with Keith Gessen (the author of Raising Raffi) and Britt Hawthorne (the author of Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide). If you are nearby, please come! It’s free and open to the public.
