This is not what life was supposed to be like…

We have all been deeply affected by the tragedy that took place in Newtown, CT last week. It will be a long time before we’ll recover (if ever) and in the process of trying to do so, we’ll witness a lot of changes — some for the good and some for the bad.

One of those bad changes is the rise in sales for bulletrproof backpacks for kiddos. Yes, these exist, and apparently, sales are skyrocketing. The company, which is appropriately called Amendment II, has been in the market of making military body armor for years, but considering the abundance of school shootings, they decided to jump on that bandwagon and make body armor for kids, too. Classy.

Owner Derek Williams said that, “I can’t go into exact sales numbers, but basically we tripled our sales volume of backpacks that we typically do in a month—in one week.”

How a backpack is going to save a child’s life while he or she is standing alone and vulnerable in a classroom with their coat and bag already in a cubby is beyond me. So beyond me, in fact, I can’t help but think that this is less about protecting children and more about making money off the fear of parents everywhere.

The backpacks, should you be in the market for one this holiday season (talk about a depressing gift) come in three models from which to choose: “A SwissGear that’s made for teens, and we’ve got an Avengers and a Disney Princess backpack for little kids.”

Disney fucking Princess bulletproof backback. Did you ever think you’d live to see the day that this is actually something that’s being created and marketed toward parents? Has our innocence been so robbed from us, that now this type of stuff is regarded just as normal as making your child a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and cutting off the crusts?

We’ve already seen that gun sales increased after the Sandy Hook shootings which is even more confusing and upsetting, but this is just awful. I can’t imagine this is what our ancestors wanted for us — right to bear arms and gun control arguments aside — putting a six-year-old in a bulletproof backpack should really make us realize that our country is truly out of whack. I’m not saying such tragedies don’t happen in other countries, because they do. But I am saying that they happen more often here and that’s something we really need to evaluate. Why us? And how many more times are we going to have to go through this?

No one can answer that. So, in the meantime, we’ll just send our kids off into the world in Disney-themed body armor. Great.