Back-to-School Supplies: Books, Pens, Body Armor

Aug. 17, 2007 — -- Parents shopping for school supplies probably haven't thought to include body armor on their lists, but after recent school shootings including April's Virginia Tech massacre, two companies are marketing armored backpacks and uniforms.

"Back in '99 following the Columbine shootings, me and my buddy Joe Curran — both of us are parents of two children — wondered if there was anything out there in the world to protect children in school if there was a shooting," Mike Pelonzi, co-inventor of My Child's Pack, a bulletproof backpack, told ABCNEWS.com.

The knapsacks each contain a 20-ounce bulletproof plate. Pelonzi wouldn't disclose what the plate was made from, but said it was not Kevlar, the material from which most police bulletproof vests are made.

Pelonzi said the bags would have been effective in defending users from the sorts of weapons used in 97 percent of school shootings since 1999. The bags sell for $175.

Pelonzi said he was a firearms safety instructor and Curran is a former member of the military.

It was still too early to know how many bags they had sold, he said, but their Web site received more than 12,000 hits in its first two days.

In a homemade commercial posted on YouTube, a young girl demonstrates how the backpack can be held in front of the body to fend off a shot. The bags are also seen being shot at with various firearms.

Across the Atlantic, the British company Bladerunner responded to a number of stabbing attacks on schoolchildren by lining the blazers of students' uniforms with Kevlar.

"Just in the last week I have heard from parents that problems with school violence are increasing. Some parents have been saying they have to instruct their children to go to school without money, or without their mobile phones. Kids have to take off their school ties so they're not attacked," Barry Samms, the company's founder, told ABCNEWS.com from the United Kingdom.

Bladerunner, he said, initially began lining hooded sweatshirts with Kevlar and started applying the process to school uniforms after it was approached by several parents.