Sorry kids, but the guns are more important.

Sorry kids, but the guns are more important.

As CEO of the Massachusetts-based company Bullet Blocker, Burke sells one of the hotter goods in the body armor industry: bulletproof backpacks. And though he doesn't revel in the fact that business tends to boom after school shootings, he sees his company as providing a service for increasingly nervous parents. "Business is growing unfortunately due to all the things happening in the country," Burke said.[...] Bullet Blocker's co-founder, Joe Curran, built his first bulletproof backpack for his two kids after the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999. He realized the commercial potential, and began manufacturing backpacks and other school safety products for a wider audience. Today, Bullet Blocker produces iPad cases, notebooks, and school bag survival kits ($400 -- advertised as a "great self contained kit to augment the reaction plans for school lock downs").

If you want to know just how far afield we have gotten from the central notion that Americans ought to be able to go about their daily business without being overly concerned that someone is going to freedom a few holes in their head for no other reason than they can, note that the markets for bulletproof backpacks for children and bulletproof blankets for children not old enough to carry backpacks are considerably more robust, at this point, than the marketplace of ideas on how to perhaps prevent the children from being shot at This relies on the deranged school shooter aiming for the backpack and/or iPad and/or notebook and not the child, of course, and also relies on your child taking their Normal American Life survival kits to all the other places where very stupid and paranoid people get to wander around with as much ammo as they can carry, places like movie theaters, restaurants, Walmart, Target, more restaurants, that other Walmart, public parks and so on while we sternly warn the police that they're not allowed to consider that noteworthy or maybe somebody they ought to keep an eye on.

As an aside, you'll also need to teach your child that they would be considered extremely rude, and definitely a poor American, if they actually whip out their bullet-resistant backpack when they, say, see a man waving his AR-15 around the neighborhood Chipotle, so they need to be taught to not actually use the bulletproof school supplies to protect themselves until they or someone else gets shot first. The penalty for presuming the nice man with his finger near the trigger might be a threat would be, of course, a barrage of resulting rape threats and staged mock executions from the perfectly stable and well-adjusted gunman in question—and no 6-year-old wants to start their lives out on some gun patriot's personal shit-list.

Where were we? Ah, yes. People are buying their children "bulletproof" backpacks as some measure of solace against the NRA-backed campaign to make sure crazy people still get to shoot children if the only way to stop it would be to subject prospective high-magazine designed-for-warfare semi-automatic something something owners to a bit of paperwork. You know, freedom.