For most San Antonio kids, this is the last weekend of summer, which means parents are scrambling to get all the back-to-school supplies, and those recent school shootings are weighing on their minds, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
For the first time, major retailers like Walmart, Office Depot and Home Depot are selling bulletproof backpacks.
But, do they work?
We asked Tom Kelley at the Texas School Safety Center, based at Texas State University.
"It's such a difficult thing to answer, because there is not any data to support. It's a fairly new thing so we don’t know how they would hold up in a shooting," he says.
This year has seen two high-profile school shootings. Seventeen people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Ten people were killed at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, outside Houston.
That has well-intentioned parents looking for any way to keep their kids safe as they head back to class. Kelley says that's laudable, but if they wanted to raise the odds of their child surviving an attack, the best way is to focus on tactics.
"How to avoid an event. How to deny access to it. How to defend yourself against it," he says. "Those kind of things are more empowering than what you wear."
He says kids don’t wear backpacks all day, and when they do, they only cover a small part of the back.
But a bulletproof backpack may provide emotional support for kids, who increasingly worry about an attack.
A study by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of American teens say they are very or somewhat worried about the possibility of a shooting happening at their school.
"Overall, 57% of teens say they are worried about the possibility of a shooting happening at their school, with one-in-four saying they are very worried. About three-in-ten (29%) say they are not too worried about this, and just 13% say they are not at all worried," their report says.
School shooting fears differ by gender as well: 64% of girls say they are very or somewhat worried about a shooting happening at their school, compared with 51% of boys.
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