top of page

Schools Squander Millions to ‘Bulletproof’ Windows. It Doesn’t Work.

Joseph Hayes

Original article by the Wall Street Journal Click Here



Two people in protective gear examine a shattered glass panel in an indoor range. The mood is investigative and focused.
Two individuals examine the impact damage on a bulletproof glass panel at a shooting range, highlighting the material's resilience under live conditions.

Ryan Wilcox peered through his binoculars as a gunman fired at a large piece of glass propped up at a shooting range in the foothills of Utah’s Wasatch mountains.

Wilcox, a Republican state lawmaker charged with securing Utah’s schools, was eager to see if a polyester-based film, thinner than a credit card and applied to glass windows and doors, might answer a desperate nationwide query: How can schools stop attackers from shooting their way in?

Window-film dealers who sell to school districts claim their product is the answer. 

Wilcox and other high-ranking state officials watched the bullet strike the film-coated glass. “It just went right through,” he said. “It failed right in front of the whole group.”

The largest U.S. manufacturers of window film, including 3M, say it can’t stop bullets or intruders. But that hasn’t stopped some window-film dealers from cashing in on false or exaggerated claims of ballistic protection.

The Wall Street Journal found that more than $100 million has been spent for the purchase and installation of window film at school districts nationwide. The film is attractive to school officials because it is a fraction of the cost of bulletproof glass.

New mandates in Utah and Texas require all public schools to install window-security measures, either window film or bulletproof glass. Tennessee now requires the application of window film at new or remodeled schools. The new requirements have spawned a proliferation of dealers in the high-profit window-film business.

Some window-film dealers impress school officials with live demonstrations that show the film stopping bullets. Darrell Smith, executive director of the International Window Film Association, says that is a trick done with low-powered guns or bullets and a thicker, outdated glass most schools don’t have.

Dealers deny they make misleading or dubious claims, saying they rely on independent testing and explain product limitations to buyers.

“It’s the wild, wild West,” Joseph Hendry, a school-safety consultant, said of the window-film industry. Schools are vulnerable to misleading claims, he said, because “a lot of people in schools who are in charge of security have no security background.”


School district leaders fearful of an attack at one of their campuses are eager to believe that window film and other safety products might save lives. In sales pitches, some dealers cite the 2012 killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and last year’s attack at The Covenant School in Tennessee—both examples of assailants shooting out glass doors to gain entry.

Window film, however, wouldn’t have prevented the fatal shooting this month at a Christian school in Madison, Wisc., that police say was carried out by one of the students. 

“If there is anything that we can do to keep our students and staff safer, how can we justify not doing it?” said Chris Woods, superintendent of a 5,600-student district in Washington state, which recently installed window film at all 10 of its campuses at a cost of $1.45 million. 

Dallas Independent School District said it budgeted as much as $12 million to install window film at dozens of campuses. Nashville’s public schools put up $3.5 million. The school district in New Rochelle, N.Y., spent $5.5 million on film and security glass, according to contracting-data provider GovSpend.


A spokeswoman for Avery Dennison, an Ohio-based window-film manufacturer for the past three decades, said the company makes no claims of “being bullet-resistant, bulletproof, or meeting bulletproofing standards” and doesn’t market its film as a means to prevent intruders.

The largest dealers in the industry say there is still plenty of money to be made by dropping bulletproof claims and sticking to the broadly accepted idea that window film can slow attackers trying to shoot their way in, buying precious minutes for help to arrive. 

Tennessee state lawmakers struck the term “bullet-resistant film” from the state’s 2023 law after learning this year that there is no such thing.

“If these schools have spent money on this bulletproof film, can we go back and sue these contractors that have sold us this?” Todd Warner, a Republican state assemblyman, said at a March hearing. 

‘Exclusive pricing’

After learning of a shooting at a Georgia high school in September, window-film entrepreneur Tom Czyz said in a social-media post, “My team and I will be heading there immediately.” He drove five hours from his home near Myrtle Beach, S.C., to the campus in Winder, Ga. The attack had left four dead, and a student from the school was arrested.


Czyz, a former homicide detective, said he has visited the sites of dozens of school shootings since he founded the window-film and glass company Armoured One in 2012.

He said he tries to persuade witnesses and school officials to talk to him about what happened. “I put my arm around their shoulder and say, ‘How did this affect you?’” Czyz said.


During his two-day visit in Georgia, Czyz tried to get firsthand accounts. He waited outside a building where teachers were meeting until a school staffer called the sheriff to keep him away.  

Czyz later posted on LinkedIn that he had completed a report from his team’s investigation. He sent emails to school administrators, architects and law-enforcement officials offering to make a presentation about his findings. 

After a deadly school shooting in Nashville last year, Czyz concluded in another email blast that every district should act quickly to harden entryway windows and doors. The email also encouraged recipients to contact him for “exclusive pricing.”   


Czyz said he wished the government would crack down on unscrupulous competitors making exaggerated claims about window-film protection. “It’s false advertising,” he said.

His company claims its window film has passed a “shooter attack test” completed by an independent testing company called FILTI and certified by the nonprofit National Safety and Security Protection Association. In marketing materials sent to school districts, the company said, “every other film sold is not going to protect you from someone with a gun.”

Both the testing company and the nonprofit share the same Syracuse, N.Y., address as Armoured One. Czyz acknowledged that he started both and that FILTI was an “in-house testing company” he used until he found an independent company to create a test he approved of. FILTI test results still appear in company marketing materials.

Hampton City Schools in Virginia recently completed an $847,000 window-film project with Armoured One after the district’s security supervisor James Bailey attended one of the company’s demonstrations. “We know that it’s not bulletproof film,” he said and noted that it wasn’t pitched that way. “We are trying to buy time if there was a serious incident.”

Unbelievable

Two dozen people gathered last month at a shooting range in San Bernardino, Calif., to watch Steven Johnson, president of Safe Haven Defense, demonstrate his window-film product.  


He told the gathering of school district employees the story of how he left a full-time career as a police detective in Arizona to create a window film that, unlike others, actually stops bullets. 

“People aren’t going to believe what you saw here today,” Johnson promised the group. 

With cellphone cameras pointed at him, Johnson first hurled a rock and then swung a metal baseball bat at a sample window. An employee crouched inches behind the glass.

“I’m not going to ask you guys to protect your staff, your students, without me proving to you that I trust my film protecting my staff,” Johnson said. The glass shattered between the sheets of film but stayed in place and kept the bat from breaking through. 

Next, he fired a handgun at another window and the bullets lodged in the glass. No employee had to brave the test. “You can actually pull out the entire piece of lead,” Johnson said, picking at the bullet.

Nathaniel Holt, the chief facilities officer for Compton Unified School District in Los Angeles County, had driven nearly two hours that day to see if the window film was suitable for a new high school under construction. 


Holt stepped forward to get a closer look at the glass. “I’m sold,” he said.

Safe Haven has grown nationwide in less than a decade with the help of its live demonstrations. The company displays its protection claim on its booth at conferences that draw school-safety officials and vendors around the U.S.: “A window film that stops bullets using your existing glass.”


View the rest at WSJ.com

21 views0 comments

Comentarios


Los comentarios se han desactivado.

© 2025 by Action Bullet Resistant, Inc. || Privacy Policy

  • instagram
  • Facebook
  • Linkedin
bottom of page