'It's just the reality:' Parents buy bulletproof protection for school kids

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CBS12) — Parents are already out buying things their children will need once school begins.

But there’s an item you might not have thought about that some parents are buying.

Janelle Campbell of West Palm Beach is a single mom with two sons, 3-year-old Elijah and 14-year-old Michael, who will be a ninth grader at John I. Leonard High School this fall.

“It doesn’t make me feel safe sending my kid to school,” Campbell said.

So school safety is the first thing on her mind.

Alex Shkop runs the Guns and Range Training Center in West Palm Beach. He says he might have an answer for parents like Janelle.

On the shelves, parents will find an item for sale---a bulletproof insert made of a tough dense material --designed to fit inside a child’s backpack.

“Kids are basically sitting ducks, ‘cause they can’t leave the school. School is under lockdown, and they’re sitting in the classroom like sitting ducks, so this will give them at least an extra layer of protection,” Shkop said.

The ballistic insert is fairly light, weighing about 1 pound and 2 ounces.

“You probably want to just get small, and kind of hold it here and hopefully cover your head if you can,” Shkop said.

Squatting down, Shkop demonstrated how the student can use their backpack as a way to protect themselves from bullets.

“That’s the same armor that cops wear and it was just reshaped,” he said.

Shkop says it will stop a bullet fired from a handgun, up to a .44 magnum.

“It’s sad that we have to come to that, but that’s just the reality,” he said.

He says every time there’s a school shooting, there’s a spike in the sales of these backpack bulletproof inserts.

This small piece of armor is giving some parent peace of mind.

“I actually think it’s a great idea," Campbell said. "It’ll be awesome for kids to have something to be able to protect themselves in the event of a mass shooting at their school. I’d rather have a safer option than nothing at all."

One important note, Shkop says, is that these ballistic inserts can stop a bullet from a handgun, but not a rifle, which is more powerful.

Shkop says he’s sold about 200 of these in the past year, and it costs about $125.