(NewsNation) — Parents are worried for their children’s safety. After 21 people, including 19 elementary school children were slaughtered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that worry has grown exponentially.
But it is far from a new worry. Seventeen students were killed in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. In 2012, 27 people were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
Those are just a sliver of a growing list of examples of gun-toting assailants murdering children in schools. Lawmakers have yet to pass any legislation to address the horrific issue of school shooting.
But some parents are taking steps to ensure their kids’ safety.
Josh Bastian equipped his children with bulletproof inserts that slide into their backpacks in the event a shooter were to enter one of their buildings. Bastian and his wife bought the bulletproof inserts, which he said are about the size and weight of a notebook, at a swap event.
“We went home that night, slipped it into (our daughter’s) backpack, taught her what to do if she had her backpack on and she heard firecrackers or loud popping noises in school,” Bastian said. “We showed her how to get as small as possible and hide behind her bulletproof backpack.”
They called it “becoming a turtle” when their daughter would protect herself behind her reinforced backpack.
She was only in kindergarten.
“I think more importantly, now that she is getting older, what we’ve taught her, which is probably more effective than hiding behind her backpack, is to run, hide and fight,” Bastian said.
The gunmen in Uvalde, Florida and Connecticut all used AR-15-style assault rifles to carry out their massacres. Unfortunately, the bulletproof inserts do not protect against that style of weapon.
“It’s just a weird time in our lives that we have to consider how to mitigate the possibility that something like the tragedy that happened in Uvalde could happen here at home,” Bastian said.
As far as the impact carrying a bulletproof backpack has on his daughter, Bastian said it appears to be minimal.
“The beauty of it is my daughter doesn’t seem to be affected by it,” Bastian said. “We talk about it, what do you guys do in school and she’s like ‘well, we have lockdowns and we hide under the window, we’re all quiet,’ but that’s it.”