Elmar Uy thought his software was acting up when he first saw the huge jump in sales for bulletproof backpack last Friday. Uy double-checked the figures and discovered the Web site’s traffic stats had jumped tenfold.
Then he turned on CNN, and it suddenly made sense. Following the slaughter of 20 children and six adults last week at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., Bullet Blocker says it is struggling to keep up with demand for its bulletproof backpacks for children.
“We sell 15 to 20 backpacks in a good week,” said Uy, Bullet Blocker’s vice president of sales. “Since the shooting, we’ve sold 50 to 100 per day.”
Uy’s is not an isolated case. At least half a dozen companies sell bulletproof backpacks and vests for children, and in the wake of the country’s second-worst school shooting, they say business is booming. In Arizona, a body armor manufacturer called Amendment II says sales of its bulletproof childrens’ backpacks — Avengers for boys, Disney Princesses for girls — have jumped more than 500 percent. Black Dragon Tactical, a survivalist company in New Hampshire, is promoting armored backpack-inserts on its Facebook page.
“Arm the teachers, in the meantime, bulletproof the kids,” Black Dragon posted on Facebook on Sunday. “These panels fit into most common backpacks.”