The annual trip many parents make to purchase a new school backpack has become central to the gun safety debate.
Instead of simply deciding between different colors, sizes, and logos, parents are also weighing whether to purchase bulletproof backpacks to protect their children in the event of a mass shooting at school.
“When we were buying for my three grandchildren that are going to school this year, what they would need, a new question came up that I never thought in my wildest dreams I would have to answer,” Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said last week. “And that is, in buying the backpacks, did we want bulletproof backpacks? Imagine that.”
Envisioning some frightening scenarios based on the pattern of U.S. mass shootings in public places, including schools, parents (and some children) have been approaching lawmakers asking them to take some kind of legislative action. The two parties are currently negotiating the terms of gun control legislation, led by President Trump, and lawmakers are feeling intense pressure to pass something.
“A mother came and grabbed my hand and would not let it go and said to me, ‘My daughter is starting kindergarten this fall,’” Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell said. “‘She is five years old. I have to decide whether I buy her the backpack that she wants or a bulletproof backpack.'”
According to Education Week, there have been dozens of school shootings since 2018 that killed or injured one person or more.
School shopping for the 2019-2020 year began just as the nation grappled with a series of mass shootings at public gatherings. Gunmen opened fire on crowds in Odessa, Texas; Gilroy, California; Dayton, Ohio; and other places, leaving dozens dead over the summer.
A company called Bullet Blocker, which retrofits backpacks with body armor, saw a 200 percent increase in sales in August.
Parents and children are clearly feeling desperate, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said, and they are influencing the gun control debate by forcing lawmakers to push harder for a bipartisan deal that has eluded them for years.
“They have moved the dialogue tremendously,” Manchin told the Washington Examiner. “In a positive way.”
The West Virginia senator has co-authored a measure, first introduced in 2013, with Republican Sen. Pat Toomey that would expand gun background checks to all commercial sales. The measure has been blocked twice, but parental fear is driving the effort to try again, Manchin said.
“It’s all about school safety,” Manchin told the Washington Examiner. “And it’s permeated now to where the average American has concerns about family members, a child going to a ballgame or a concert.”
Toomey told the Washington Examiner his goal is to prevent the wrong people from obtaining guns in the first place.
“My focus has remained on keeping the guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, and the mechanism we have to try to accomplish that is background checks, and I want to extend those background checks to all commercial sales,” he said.
Much of the Toomey-Manchin proposal is included in draft language of a measure the White House floated among the GOP in Congress last week.
It marks the first serious discussion by Republicans about a background check measure in decades, although the NRA has already rejected the proposal as too expansive.
Unlike past efforts, even the GOP leadership is eager to pass something.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he is on board with the effort but is relying on Trump to offer a final proposal in order to ensure whatever passes Congress does not get vetoed.
“I think, given the multiple horrendous shootings in August, we owe it to the American people to act,” McConnell said. “And to act means pass the Senate, pass the House, and be signed into law by the president.”
Dingell, whose late husband, Rep. John Dingell, sat on the NRA board, said parents like the mother she met at the Dearborn festival last month are ramping up pressure on Congress.
“Her daughter is on the autistic scale,” Dingell said. “And she said to me, ‘She will never stay quiet in a closet. I’m scared to death. You have to do something. You have to do something.’”
