How to Use Your PAKSHIELD Ballistic Protection Insert

Proper Use

It’s stressful to think about a situation where you may need PAKSHIELD, but it’s worth it to be ready. PAKSHIELD provides extra peace-of-mind, but it’s important to know how to carry it correctly. PAKSHIELD should never be used for any reason other than personal defense in an active-shooter situation.

Inside the Bag

First, ensure your PAKSHIELD is properly packed in your bag or backpack. In a backpack, position PAKSHIELD so that it is upright and as close as possible to the User’s body. While notebooks, laptops, and textbooks are not ballistic materials, they can slow down bullets in certain cases. Positioning your PAKSHIELD close to the User’s body will permit a potential projectile to penetrate all the other items in your bag before ever reaching the ballistic material.

What to Do and What Not to Do

Ballistic inserts like PAKSHIELD are intended to prevent the calibers and ammunition covered by the NIJ IIIA standards from penetrating the PAKSHIELD ballistic material. But such rounds can still impact PAKSHIELD with extreme force. This force can cause injury or other damage. Therefore, PAKSHIELD users should review these guidelines, along with those on the product labels and all inserts included with your PAKSHIELD products.

PAKSHIELD should always be used within a bag. PAKSHIELD should not be used on its own outside of a bag.

Users should not hold a bag carrying PAKSHIELD with outstretched arms in front of the body or face. Instead of holding the bag outstretched, the bag should be braced tightly against a user’s body. This can be done in several ways including:

  • Wearing the backpack on the user’s back, as in a situation when the user is evacuating a dangerous area.
  • Users can lay on their stomach with elbows on the ground by the head. With the thumb-side of the fists against the forehead, users should hold the backpack (carrying PAKSHIELD) upright against their forearms in front of their head. Then, the user makes sure to keep the head down, looking at the floor (figure 3). DO NOT place backpack directly against the user’s head.
  • Wear the backpack in front of the body, in reverse, to provide torso defense (figure 2).
  • Lay or sit in other ways in which the bag or backpack is sturdily braced against the arms or body.

PAKSHIELD users should NOT position the bag or other item containing their PAKSHIELD in direct contact with their head. Doing so can result in severe injury or death, even when the PAKSHIELD ballistic material is not penetrated.

PAKSHIELD offers the most protection when tightly braced and when covering the head and largest area of vital organs.