Kickstarter is used by creators to launch everything from office doo-dads to self-tapping beehives, but earlier this year they quietly launched a different kind of campaign. The goal? Shut down every creator developing products used for personal anti-ballistic protection, including us.

As one would expect from the company that created crowdsourcing, they met their goal in record time. In about three days, Kickstarter had suspended every campaign for personal protective gear on its site, and they had been able to do it without a single stretch goal.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

At one o’clock in the morning the day before, my team had proudly launched our first product, one we accurately if somewhat awkwardly described as “the world’s first stadium seat that converts in seconds into a high-caliber bulletproof vest”. In the wee hours between one and breakfast, the “CoverMe-Seat” — our chair / vest combination — had garnered hundreds of views and several sales. It seemed that Kickstarter was already living up to the hype, and validating the time, energy & resources we had spent for the past 30 days hyping our launch.

My company, Practical Protection, is one of several companies that was using Kickstarter to promote multi-functional ballistic protection to everyday consumers. Our invention solves a lot of the problems that bulletproof backpacks don’t: it offers front & rear protection, it can actually protect against AR-15s, and it doesn’t need to be carried around. Perhaps equally important, it doesn’t look like anything more than a seat cushion, so it doesn’t make the classroom feel like a prison.

As a compliance lawyer, I’m a bit of a paranoiac about terms & conditions, so we had reached out to Kickstarter for explicit permission that our product was clear for launch, and gotten it, twice. Minefield cleared… full speed ahead.

While my company had not been the first to launch an anti-ballistic product on the platform — that distinction goes to the successfully-funded Bulletproof Baseball Cap — we were among the first to do so in an era when bulletproof protection is going mainstream, and we were proud to offer a product that offered more than a false sense of security.

As we sat down with our coffee the morning after our launch, an unexpected message popped up on the campaign page: “This Campaign has been Suspended”. The 7 am email confirmed it: after a “thorough review”, the company had determined that our product was in violation of one or more unspecified Kickstarter rules, and the campaign been suspended indefinitely. Adding insult to injury, the email came from a no-reply address, with no mechanism for appeal, phone number or other means to connect with anyone at the company.

The next day, the rest of the protection-related projects were shut down as well. An agonizing 72 hours later, Kickstarter provided a brief explanation to the product team. Bulletproof protection was now considered to be a “Weapon Accessory”, and was therefore prohibited from the platform. This was despite formal pre-launch assurances to all the creators that their campaigns been thoroughly evaluated and were green to launch.

The decision of Kickstarter to characterize ballistic protection products as “weapon accessories” is troubling on several fronts. First, it draws a correlation between products designed to protect people from violence and the weapons they are built to protect against, an interesting policy choice during a time when being protected is becoming the new normal. I find it hard to stomach the fact that some of my most cool-headed friends are considering bulletproof backpacks for their kids, but I respect that having protection makes them feel better sending their children off to school.

The Kickstarter position also discourages and marginalizes companies that attempt to combat mass shooting. I sincerely believe top-down reform is necessary, and we’ve commited to supporting early-intervention efforts and non-partisan reform, but I also believe that structural, policy-driven fixes are not mutually exclusive to effective near-term solutions.

Perhaps most importantly, Kickstarter’s new rules makes it harder for people to protect themselves and their loved ones by limiting their ability to purchase and own bulletproof protection. The idea behind my company is similar to the philosophy behind many of the new wave of protection companies: we should be able to prepare for a worst case scenario without putting on body armor every morning. Whether it’s a backpack, a seat pad, or the cushion that sits at your desk, access to discrete protection should be encouraged, not snuffed out — at least while the bigger problem remains.

So what is the next step for our team? After spending months promoting our Kickstarter launch, we spun our wheels for a day or two (even trying IndieGoGo, but without the same results). Finally we resolved to do it ourselves… the CoverMe-Seat is now shipping from our own site.

That leads us to this: as a rule of thumb when launching a new company or product, you want to minimize as many potential barriers as possible, especially barriers that are outside of your control. Kickstarter offers a huge upside, but it also introduces a massive element of risk that you might not need as an entrepreneur. Believe me, there will be plenty of work to do on the things you can control.

In the meantime, Kickstarter continues to allow campaigns for gun-related apparel, just so long as there’s no protection involved.