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Body Armor 101: What You Need to Know

Ever since mankind started attacking one another with pointy objects, man has also thought of ways to defend himself. One of those ways has been the use of personal body armor — whether ancient warriors clad in boiled leather, Samurai dressed in intricate lamellar armor, or medieval knights of old with their iconic plate armor and shields.To get more news about Hard Armor Plates, you can visit bulletproofboxs.com official website.

The advent of firearms and ever more powerful ballistic performance outpaced the development of technologies for protective equipment that could be deployed in a practical manner. Flak jackets (those issued in the Korean and Vietnam wars were constructed of nylon) could help stop fragments and slower or smaller-caliber bullets, but were not effective against typical firearm threats. Metal (steel) plates were required to provide more protection. The end result, not unlike an average teenage boy's attempts to reach second base with his first sweetheart, was heavy, uncomfortable, sweaty, and awkward.

Then in 1965, Stephanie Kwolek, a chemist at DuPont tasked with creating fibers for use in tires, invented a para-aramid synthetic fiber known as Kevlar — giving rise to the so-called bulletproof vests commonly seen today. And good old-fashioned steel has been supplanted with other materials and manufacturing processes to protect against more lethal threats.
Critical to protect warfighters on today's battlefield as well as law enforcement personnel on the streets at home, protective body armor also continues to spark the interest of civilians who might find themselves in harm's way or wish to be prepared. While it's fun to focus on shooting and putting rounds downrange, don't neglect a good defense. Generally speaking, civilians may purchase and own protective body armor, as long as they aren't felons. Committing crimes while wearing armor can also result in additional penalties. Note also that Connecticut's laws require one to purchase body armor in-person from a local retailer; mail order sales aren't allowed. Be sure to double check the regulations in your area. That being said, a number of armor manufacturers have policies restricting or prohibiting sales of their products to civilians, and companies and distributors have various requirements for customers to demonstrate their eligibility.

Soft Versus Hard Armor
There are two main types of body armor: soft and hard. Soft body armor is what many might envision when thinking of police officers — a vest made of flexible materials worn around your torso. Typically, there are inserts (front and back) made of the protective ballistic material, sealed against the elements and held inside of a carrier. The inserts may also extend around the torso to provide side coverage. In some cases, both inserts and carrier are custom built to the end user's exact measurements, providing maximum coverage and comfort. In others, they are available in various standard sizes (e.g. small, medium, large, etc). Custom armor is usually also available specifically for female users, modified to fit their body contours. Carriers may be designed to be worn under clothing for concealed use, or exposed for load carriage and tactical applications.

Hard armor is constructed of rigid materials and, at the expense of weight and flexibility, provides increased protection against greater threats. Because hard armor plates are rigid and can significantly restrict mobility, they are generally sized and placed to protect specific parts of the anatomy only — front, back, and sometimes side as well. In its most basic form, a rifle plate starts as a flat, exactly rectangular shape. But that doesn't match the human body too well unless you're a Lego character, so plates are typically available in various shapes, sizes, and curvatures. For instance, plates with a “shooter's cut” or “swimmer's cut” have the top corners clipped to allow for more natural buttstock placement and articulation of the user's arms and shoulders. Single curve plates are curved along a single dimension, while multi-curve plates are contoured along two or more dimensions, to better fit your torso. Keep in mind that if you look more like Homer Simpson than Tim Kennedy (see page 90), you may have difficulty finding plates contoured to match your Duff Beer-fueled shape. Usually this means living with a smaller plate and less coverage in order to accommodate your body type.