A Bakersfield company is offering a new product that could help ease parents, who are concerned for their kids' safety when they're in class.
It’s a new reality for kids these days.
Students walking into school with a backpack not only full of textbooks and pencils but a steel plate made to stop a bullet.
Christopher Cook, the owner of EP Armory in Southwest Bakersfield, is selling the protective backpacks. “We started to try and think of somewhat of an idea that we could do which would help protect our children in case of something like that incident and also other children,” said Cook.
Cook says this idea has been a thought for about a year and started making these safety packs in Santa Clarita. “If you push it in slow it’s actually very malleable it moves around pretty easily but once you smack it will stop and harden up, you see how it actually took its form and stopped.”
A backpack complete with the steel plate will cost you about $11, but EP Armory will also sew a plate into a backpack you already own for $50, making it weigh just the same as it did before adding the protective layer, which is a good incentive for parents.
“Once they came in and actually see the plates that go into these, and exactly how light the backpack is they fly off the shelf,” said Cook.
“My 20-year-olds are in college and they have them, feel protected, my 13-year-old and 11-year-old both of them feel much better knowing that they will be able to protect themselves and possibly someone else if a shooter was to come onto campus,” said Pepper Cook, a mother who bought backpacks for her children.
Pepper has five children, the youngest 11-years old, and four of them carry these packs with them to school, giving her peace of mind.
Which she says to her is priceless. “There’s really no price that you can put on your child’s life."
“If it has to be used…it’s insurance, everybody has insurance why not have it for your children,” said Cook.
EP Armory has already sold about 250 of these backpacks. But if a backpack isn’t your style they also have purses that can be made to stop a bullet as well.
