Body armor on show at a retailer in Pennsylvania in 2011.
Ryan McFadden/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle through Getty Images
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Ryan McFadden/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle through Getty Images
Body armor on show at a retailer in Pennsylvania in 2011.
Ryan McFadden/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle through Getty Images
When an 18-year-old man stepped right into a Buffalo grocery retailer final Saturday with an AR-15-style rifle, the retailer’s safety guard tried to cease the taking pictures by firing his personal weapon again at the shooter.
But the safety guard’s fireplace was stopped by the shooter’s physique armor, authorities say. Then, the shooter shot and killed the guard, Aaron Salter.
“The security guard that was killed was a retired Buffalo police lieutenant. [He] engaged the shooter, who was wearing tactical gear and body armor. [He] did shoot and hit the suspect, but it did not penetrate the body armor,” mentioned Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in an interview with NPR.
The Buffalo shooter’s resolution to put on physique armor makes him the newest mass shooter lately to take action, following high-profile instances in Colorado, Texas and California.
In the U.S., physique armor is topic to far fewer restrictions nationwide than guns. Its use in mass shootings has ticked up lately, specialists say, elevating questions on the tools’s accessibility and fears about the deadliness of such shootings, if police are unable to make use of lethal pressure to cease them.
Who should purchase physique armor?
The solely buy limitation in most of the U.S. is a federal ban on possession of physique armor by folks convicted of violent felonies. Connecticut restricts physique armor gross sales additional by requiring gross sales to be face-to-face transactions.
In a pointy distinction with firearms, no states require background checks, permits or registration.
Some retailers decline to promote to civilians. But others promote merchandise to anybody who will buy it.
Cheap vests run from about $200 to $300. At the highest finish, physique armor and ceramic plates might be very costly, as a lot as 1000’s of {dollars} for an entire set.
How is physique armor used?
Body armor is designed to guard the wearer from damage. Although it’s typically accessible to the civilian public, the overwhelming majority of physique armor is bought to be used by army, legislation enforcement and safety organizations.
Body armor varies broadly. Vests are typically product of a versatile ballistic cloth, and plates might be inserted to extend safety.
At the low finish, delicate physique armor can shield the wearer from knives and handgun bullets. Someone sporting the highest-level armor with ceramic plates can survive a direct hit by rifle ammunition.
Depending on the sort of armor and the depth of the state of affairs, the wearer could not even discover being hit by a bullet, says Aaron Westrick, a physique armor skilled and legal justice professor at Lake Superior State University.
“The adrenaline is running high, and the immediate effect of getting struck on body armor most of the time is pretty much nothing,” he mentioned. “Later on, you’re going to have a bruise and you might be sore.”
How usually has physique armor been used by mass shooters?
Body armor is pricey, and it is not often used by typical criminals, Westrick says.
But he says he sees physique armor used extra usually by ideologically impressed shooters and shooters that meticulously plan their assaults, as the Buffalo suspect allegedly did.
The variety of mass shooters who wore physique armor has trended upwards lately, in response to knowledge collected by The Violence Project, a nonpartisan group that researches gun violence.
That group discovered that not less than 21 mass shooters over the final 40 years have worn physique armor – the majority in the final decade.
Some of the most high-profile shootings in latest reminiscence had been carried out by shooters who wore physique armor. That consists of the 2012 movie show taking pictures in Aurora, Colo., the 2015 San Bernardino assault and final 12 months’s taking pictures at a King Soopers grocery retailer in Boulder, Colo.
In 2017, the shooter at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas was confronted by Stephen Willeford, a former NRA firearms teacher, who fired again with an AR-15 of his personal. Willeford’s first two pictures apparently struck the shooter in his physique armor, he mentioned he discovered later. Only when Willeford was in a position to intention at the aspect of the shooter’s torso did his fireplace land.
Police coaching has modified to replicate the actuality of physique armor, Westrick says. “Training has been modified to circumvent armor if it’s present,” he mentioned.
Have there been any efforts to manage physique armor in the U.S.?
There have been unsuccessful makes an attempt to ban civilians from possessing the forms of higher-rated physique armor designed to guard the wearer from bullets fired by rifles.
Legislators have launched payments in Congress, sometimes after a high-profile taking pictures during which the shooter was sporting physique armor. None have handed.
In 2014, a taking pictures in southern California during which a person sporting physique armor and armed with an AR-15 rifle killed two folks and injured a Riverside County sheriff’s deputy. After the assault, Rep. Michael Honda of California, a Democrat, launched what the Responsible Body Armor Possession Act.
“This bill will keep military body armor out of the wrong hands,” Honda mentioned at a press convention saying the invoice. “It would ensure that only law enforcement, firefighters and other first responders would be able to access enhanced body armor.”
In 2019, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat, proposed one other physique armor invoice. Schumer’s invoice would have required civilians to amass FBI permission to purchase armor.
“Shockingly, with the click of a mouse, the scroll of a thumb or the dialing of a phone, just about anyone can order-up the kind of advanced armor or tactical law enforcement gear we see used in wars or all-out law enforcement raids, and that is unacceptable and needs to change,” he mentioned then.
Those proposals, and others like them, have not gone far.
In New York, the place Saturday’s taking pictures passed off, laws was launched final 12 months that will ban most New Yorkers from proudly owning physique armor. That invoice was stricken.