The doldrums of summer are eclipsing, Targets around the country have shelves stacked high with Ticonderoga pencils and Jansport backpacks. Students have just one thing on their minds as the coming school year looms: how can I prevent my delicate, fleshy shell from being made into swiss cheese by an AR-15?

Seattle Public Schools don’t start until Sept. 6 which leaves plenty of time to buy your child whichever bulletproof protection they have their eye on.

Matt Materazo’s new product, PakProtect, for instance, is specially designed for school backpacks. He designed it with a bunch of teens and is completely apolitical.

With 23 school shootings during the 2018 school year where someone was hurt or killed—and there are probably more to come—this seems like a pretty political issue. According to Materazo, who worked alongside his 16-year-old son and his son’s peers to create PakProtect, the subject of gun control didn’t come up once.

Materazo, CEO of Gladiator Solutions, created PakProtect after the school shooting in Parkland, FL that killed 17 people. Gladiator Solutions is a company in the “ballistic protection industry” so, when Materzo’s son approached him after the shooting, Materazo decided to try his hand at making “a light, thin, unobtrusive ballistic protective plate that easily fits in virtually any school or business backpack.”

Thus, PakProtect was born.

He utilized his company’s ballistic’s technology initially to give him peace of mind that he was doing what he could to protect his children. He was inspired by the teenage activists at Parkland and the teenagers he worked with to create PakProtect.

Still, he remained stalwartly silent when I brought up politics. None of the students he worked with wanted to talk politics either, he said.

“There was not one comment about gun control,” he said. “The comments that were made were all how the media—all of the reporting—has focused on gun control. We want to focus on the mental health side of this issue.”

PakProtect is donating a portion of every sale to COR Foundation, a non-profit that tries to make schools less violent.

When Materazo hosted a round-table with the teens he was working with, they all wanted to talk about mental health, he said.

“What became very clear was ‘Why isn’t more being done in the area of mental health?’” Materazo said.

Mental health has become a buzzword for conservatives in the aftermath of these mass shootings.

After a shooting in Texas that killed 12, Donald Trump famously said, “this isn’t a guns situation,” and “I think that mental health is your problem here.”

After Parkland, Trump made no mention of guns. Instead, he said he would work together with local officials to “secure our schools and tackle the difficult issue of mental health.”

To Materazo, and the students he was working with, it was the students' responsibility to make “outcast” students feel more included. The COR Foundation was the right organization to partner with because it would instruct students on how to be more compassionate.

“I think we’re doing a much better job of addressing the bullying in this country,” Materazo said. “I think it goes toward making kids feel more welcome.”

I asked him if he thought this was a lot of responsibility to have children shoulder and if he thought there was any other way—say, legislation—that could prevent these tragedies.

He agreed, vaguely. And then—

“This is the thing about Gladiator Solutions and PakProtect,” Materazo said. “We are completely,” he paused. He restarted. “We have no opinion on the political issues that are going on today. Our position is truly to provide products that enable people to get home safely. We don’t get involved in any debate on any issue at all.”

He continued.

“I didn’t ask any probing questions like you’re asking me,” Materazo said. “It’s about making this product.”

The last thing I wondered about Materazo was who he voted for.

He bristled.

“I don’t talk politics at all,” Materazo said, “it’s not who I am as a person. You can go to my Facebook page, I don’t post anything political. I don’t get caught up.”

He kept going.

“The reality is this,” Materazo said, his voice tight, “shooters don’t ask what your political affiliation is, they don’t ask you who’d you vote for, who’d your parents vote for, and then they stab or they blow up. I think what’s important to note is this effects everyone and across the world.”

PakProduct seems like a good enough option for what it is less a solution than a last resort.

“We feel this is a reactive and proactive approach that PakProtect is taking in this situation,” Materazo said.

Proactive could also be doing something like, I dunno, voting.