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Sales of bulletproof backpacks have spiked almost 300 percent following a spate of school shootings and the recent attacks in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Yet, none of the backpacks currently on the market would have stopped a single rifle round coming from those gunmen.To get more news about Hard Armor panels, you can visit bulletproofboxs.com official website.

Bulletproof backpacks and backpack inserts for students are for sale online and on the shelves at major retailers including Office Depot, Home Depot and Bed Bath and Beyond. Made by companies such as Bullet Blocker, Guard Dog and TuffyPacks, the backpacks sell for anywhere between $99 and $490.

“It's sad that we even have to consider a product like this, but it's the issue that we have to deal with now and hopefully we won't in the future," Steve Naremore, CEO of TuffyPacks, said.What makes these backpacks bulletproof is a back panel or an insert made of a flexible ballistic fiber material that the manufacturers market as having been independently tested up to the same standards as National Institute of Justice “Level IIIA” body armor for law enforcement.

Mollie Timmons, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said that the institute — the DOJ's research, development and evaluation agency — does not test or certify the inserts or the backpacks themselves, and that "marketing that claims NIJ testing or certification for such products is false."

To block the kind of piercing ammunition frequently fired by military-style rifles in recent mass and school shootings requires protection containing a hard ceramic or metallic plate weighing several pounds, with a “Level IV” rating.

The efficacy of bulletproof backpacks being marketed to students and parents was put to the test by Scott Reitz, a firearms instructor with the Los Angeles Police Department, in a demonstration for NBC News Los Angeles.

The “Guard Dog Security ProShield II” bulletproof backpack, rated Level IIIA, was mounted to a mannequin torso in a t-shirt and placed on a firing range.

Reitz fired at the backpack with a 9 mm pistol and with a .45-caliber handgun.Both shots penetrated the backpack’s exterior and inner fabric, but were stopped by the back panel armor.

Then, Reitz fired two shots from an AR-15 rifle, the civilian model of the U.S. military's M16, used in some recent mass shootings. Both went completely through the back panel and, with a flicker of the shirt, exited the mannequin’s back.