Roger Clark’s Guest Contributor Article in Brilliance Security Magazine
By Roger Clark, EVP of PS Furniture
Today’s world can be a dangerous place. Violent crimes involving firearms have been consistently on the rise over the past few decades. Despite the onset of the COVID-19 virus which led to a global pandemic, 2020 was one of the deadliest years for gun violence in the US since the start of the new millennium. Unfortunately, even with three months left in 2021, this year has already proven to be worse than 2020 with regard to the total number of violent shootings as well as the number of casualties from these attacks.
Though there have been many studies on the underlying causes of the rise in gun violence, its epidemic rise now impacts daily life across the entire United States.
In order to help address this reality, PS Furniture partnered with Amulet Protective Technologies – the company known for pioneering the application of state-of-the-art ballistic barrier technology to contract furnishings in order to protect life from bullets. Once engaged with Amulet, the PS Furniture team went to work and soon engineered a unique solution that combines our ultra-lightweight Revolution® tables with Amulet’s cutting-edge ballistic barrier technology. The result? Revolution Shield™, the industry’s lightest and most capable handgun-rated ballistic flip-top table.
Anti-ballistic safety-conscious furniture
PS Furniture’s Revolution Shield™ flip-top tables combine Amulet® ballistic barriers to both the table and modesty panel, allowing this unique table to instantly transform into a defensive shield with the push of a button. Our ultra-lightweight table technology also makes Revolution Shield™ easy to move and relocate, which is critical during an Active Shooter event. In fact, Revolution™ tables are two-thirds lighter than high-pressure, laminate particle board tables of the same thickness. When combined with Amulet’s ballistic barriers, our 5’ long x 24” wide Revolution Shield™ tables are 20 pounds lighter than laminated particleboard tables of the same size.
Revolution Shield™ flip-top tables are designed to stop bullets fired from a handgun, from 0.22 caliber to 0.44 magnum. Amulet 1 and 2 Ballistic Barriers deliver NIJ IIIA and UL752 handgun protection, with multi-hit, non-ricochet capability. Each table comes with two cutout modesty panel options, adding extended length when the table is flipped open. This allows the panel to fit snugly over the table’s metallic leg base, providing a full-coverage, protective wall.
Rising gun violence in schools
Of the 2,300 casualties of gun violence in the US reported between 2009 and 2020, roughly 1 in every 4 of these casualties were teens or school-age children. During the same time, mass shootings in public areas (such as bars, malls, and schools) accounted for more than half of gun deaths from all mass shootings — more than 80% of the shootings used at least one handgun, and 60% used a handgun alone. Finally, more than 1 in 10 of total mass shootings within this period occurred in public schools, wherein a bulk of the casualties were children.
PS Furniture and our ballistic technology partner, Amulet Protective Technologies, strongly recommend the deployment of Revolution Shield™ flip-top tables, in consultation with security experts, in order to help minimize risk to populations in public and other unsecured private environments.
Roger Clark is the EVP of PS Furniture and a graduate of NorthWestern University with an MBA in finance/marketing. Before PS, he was a product director for Johnson and Johnson. Mr. Clark has been the President/CEO of PS Furniture since 1998 and oversees business development, operations, and marketing for their organization.