Timothy McNulty | January 21, 2009
You know how raincoats these days are never "water-proof" but "water-resistant" instead? According to Officer.com, Obama was outfitted with a "bullet-resistant" suit yesterday.
Slate explains:
It's unclear what brand of body armor Obama sported at the inauguration, but
several companies produce discreet, thinner vests that can be worn underneath
clothing, inserted into an outer layer (like a coat) or woven into a shirt. Miguel
Caballero, a Colombian company, makes bullet-resistant leather jackets, polo
shirts, Windbreakers, and ruffled tuxedo shirts, which range from a few hundred
dollars to $7,000 in price. There is a trade-off between efficacy and subtlety
since, as a rule, it's more expensive to manufacture thin-but-reliable vests and
shirts.
No soft material can provide complete security against all types of
bullets or multiple hits in the same place (which is why the term
bulletproof is out of vogue), but the National Institute of
Justice (the Department of Justice's research agency) has developed
standards for determining to what extent a product is "resistant." Type IIA
armor, for example, should protect against a 9 mm-caliber, full-metal-jacketed,
round-nose bullet traveling at 373 meters per second. Type IIIA (the highest
standard for a flexible, as opposed to a hard, material) protects against a 357
SIG flat-nose bullet fired at a velocity of 448 meters per second.
Posted
Jan 21 2009, 01:20 PM
by
Timothy McNulty