Armoured backpacks for US children

Some experts, however, say sending children to school in armoured backpacks is not a healthy response to fear about mass shootings. Anne Marie Albano, psychiatry director at Columbia University’s Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders, said parents should convey calmness, not anxiety.

“This is not serving to keep children safe,” she said. “This is serving to increase their fear and their suspicion of their peers.”

Kerry Clark, president of Texas-based Backpackshield.com, began making the backpacks after the deadly mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007. He said he sold 15 backpacks on Wednesday. Before Friday’s shooting, he said, the company would sometimes go an entire month with one sale.

Sales of assault weapons also were on the rise.

Austin Cook, general manager of Hoover Tactical Firearms in Alabama, said the increase in sales since last Friday’s shootings has been so intense that government background checks that typically take five minutes or less are now taking up to an hour.

He said said about 50 people were waiting in line for his store to open the morning after the shootings and he had since sold nearly all of his assault weapons.

But chain store Dick’s Sporting Goods said it was suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of the shooting. The company is also removing all guns from display at its store closest to Newtown.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama will observe a moment of silence at the White House today to remember the victims of the Connecticut massacre.

The White House said the president’s observance of the shootings would take place in private, without press coverage.

A private funeral has been held in New Hampshire for the woman whose son shot her dead at their Connecticut home before driving to Sandy Hook School and killing 20 children.

Donald Briggs, the police chief in Kingston, said the funeral for Nancy Lanza was held yesterday at an undisclosed location.

He said about 25 family members attended the ceremony in the small town, where Mrs Lanza once lived.

Her 20-year-old son Adam killed her at their home in Newtown last week and then drove to the school, where he killed the children and six staff before committing suicide.

The Newtown massacre is the second-worst school shooting in US history after the 2007 Virginia Tech rampage, which left 33 people dead.

AP