Teaching your kids to be situationaly aware. Make sure they go to safe schools. Lobby your local sheriffs office and school board to mandate a School Resource Officer be employed at every school. Teach your kids what to do if some one attacks their school. All of those things are far more effective than buying a soft armor insert for a backpack and hoping for the best.
Very good advice in the context of schools, thanks.
The bad situation I envision as most likely (kid is not in school yet) would be something like shopping at Wal-mart and one or more armed lunatics show up and start shooting with no warning. If you happen to be in the wrong place like in a checkout lane, it could be a long run to cover. What are my unarmed wife and child (soon to be children) supposed to do (besides shop at Target instead)? I figure my wife throwing the pack on, grabbing the kid(s) and fleeing straight away from them would at least double her chances of survival. Granted, the likelihood of such a situation is small, but like I said before, it's a small amount of money for a bit of protection. It's not worth it though, if this law stands in the way of carrying it some places. But I see no reason for the law, period. I suspect it would be easy to rile up a bunch of moms to lobby hard for this. (Buy stock in a body armor company asap!)
So, back on topic: Are there any reasons you'd like to see this law removed or conversely, any reason you would like it to stay? Do you think Police and Sheriff's Depts would lobby for or against?