Bulletproof Backpack Sales Surge After Florida School Shooting

LOWELL, MA — Worried parents have fueled a more than 30 percent increase in sales of a Lowell, Massachusetts, company’s bulletproof backpacks in the days since the massacre at a Florida high school Wednesday. Joe Curran, who started Bullet Blocker in 2007 out of concern for his own kids, said most of the sales were in Florida, where Nikolas Cruz is accused of killing 17 people and wounding another 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

The fortified backpacks sell for about $200 and $500, an investment many parents are seeing as an important one to save their kids’ lives. They’re made with the same DuPont Kevlar lining used in police vests and weigh about 4½ pounds.

Curran told Patch the company has sold more than 500 bulletproof backpacks as of Friday, and more orders are coming in.

His company was the first to offer bulletproof backpacks, sold under the trade name “My Child’s Pack.” Curran, who trained in the U.S. Army as a Ranger and worked as a deputy sheriff and firearms instructor in Massachusetts, put his knowledge to work after the slaughter of 33 people at Virginia Tech in 2007.

“Columbine happened, then Virginia Tech happened and I had two middle school-aged kids,” he said. “As the helicopter parent I am, I went to their school and talked to teachers about what they would do in the same situation.”

The protocol at the time was to hide in the coatroom and wait for police to arrive.

The answer “wasn’t really good enough for me,” Curran said.

He had noticed that the kids all had backpacks at their desks and once home, cut apart bulletproof vests and tucked pieces around the shell of his kids' packs.

“If someone come in with a gun,” he told his kids, “hold this up between you and the shooter.

Soon, friends and families started asking him to do the same for their kids and his company was born.

“I wish i knew the answer of why it’s happening or how to stop it, but I don’t,” he said. “But the goal of starting company was to give kids something they could use as their own safety so they don’t think they are vulnerable waiting for police to show up.

“Giving them the ability to take charge of their own safety was important to me.”

Bullet Blocker sells about a dozen varieties of the backpack and other school safety solutions, as well as a line of bulletproof vests, jacket and clothing.

The company’s products are independently tested and certified by White’s Laboratories in Maryland.

Photo courtesy of Bullet Blocker