POCOMOKE — After the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., a military armor factory located in Pocomoke, on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore, decided to create bulletproof school supplies.
Tunis created handheld bulletproof whiteboards and clipboards that teachers can use in their classrooms. Each board is 18 by 20 inches and weighs less than four pounds. There are three handles on the back. Tunis says the middle handle is used to hold the board for teaching, while the two other handles are to hold the board like a shield.
“It will not stop just one round, it will stop many clips of ammunition from handguns or shotguns or other weapons as well,” said George Tunis, CEO and Chairman of Hardwire, LLC.
Tunis encourages schools to have several layers of protection.
“This does not replace a closed door or the school’s procedures, but if somebody’s gotten past that perimeter, this becomes your last line of defense,” he said.
Tunis donated 90 whiteboards to the school in Worcester County that his children attend.
“Inside every classroom, with every adult inside that school you know we have a layer of defense that’s built in,” Tunis said.
Joseph A. LaSorsa, a certified protection professional at J.A. LaSorsa & Associates, is not sure the whiteboards would be effective.
“A bulletproof whiteboard might be effective against a shotgun, but not for an assault weapon with a mass number of bullets,” LaSorsa said. “Really the only way to protect the classroom is to keep these people out of the school altogether, and to prevent mentally ill individuals from having weapons.”