Turning the Tables on Gun Violence

For decades, societies have wrestled with the conundrum of how to keep people safe and spaces open. Today, public places like schools and churches stare down the threat of random shootings with a raft of defensive measures, from metal detectors to security guards and cameras to biometrics, while many measures try to keep weapons out of the hands of the wrong people.

“It seems to me there are many unsecured public and private spaces where entry with a concealed handgun is possible,” observes Roger Clark, the owner of PS Furniture. PS Furniture is a century-old, American furniture manufacturer that recently introduced a lightweight and mobile handgun rated ballistic flip-top table in partnership with Amulet® Ballistic Barriers.

It was PS Furniture’s ultra lightweight patented table core, known as Revolution®, that attracted the attention of Amulet in Scottsdale, Arizona.

“They asked if we could work together on making a table that incorporated a ballistic barrier as a security device for different kinds of public and private spaces,” Clark recalls. “And we realized that we have these lightweight core tables, and ballistic barriers are heavy, so if you put the two things together you can create this lightweight table that stops bullets.”

Fliptop tables are popular in classrooms and training environments because of their mobility — they are on wheels — and ease of turning a horizontal table surface to vertical. Few would have imagined the seemingly ordinary table as an effective barrier of any kind, but new anti-ballistic technology transforms these familiar workhorses into the perfect bullet-resistant surface.

“They’re really common tables,” Clark says. “But when you just pull a little handle, our table flips down and you have something to duck behind that will stop handgun bullets.”

Clark calls this table a “mobile ballistic shield.” PS launched the Revolution Shield™ tables in Orlando on September 28th.

Of course, the hope is that the enhanced fliptop table will never be used as anything but an ordinary work surface for study or work, but its ability to protect individuals during what’s become an all too common scenario makes the Revolution Shield a potential part of a larger layered security solution. Amazingly, the table is two-thirds lighter than high-pressure laminate particle board tables of the same dimensions.

Yet most people continue to have a misplaced sense of security in the heavier objects around them. “The layperson has this notion that things like drywall and furniture stop bullets,” Clark says. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Bullets go through these things like there’s nothing between the bullet and the person behind the thing.”

He hopes that unsecured public and private spaces, including schools, will incorporate this technology into their security planning. “They need to have security consultation rather than just buying a product and putting it in the classroom or the cafeteria,” he says. “We think the Revolution Shield Table could be a useful element of a security threat assessment package.”

And unlike a security guard or metal detectors, the Revolution table is practically invisible protection, allowing teachers, students and workers to focus on the tasks at hand without being reminded of an unknown but looming threat.

We have yet to solve the conundrum of keeping random violence out of our open society, but Clark is proud that his company has become an unlikely source of peace of mind. He hopes that PS Furniture’s Revolution Shield table will prove, well, revolutionary, but he describes it in humbler terms, as “an invisible layer of protection that people can count on as they go about their day.”

Roger Clark is the owner and executive vice president of PS Furniture, the commercial furniture manufacturer originally founded in Pennsylvania in 1919. The Revolution Shield® Flip-Top Table, featuring Amulet® Ballistic Barriers from Amulet Protective Technologies, is the world’s lightest handgun-rated table. The standard and modesty table variants differ in length (60 and 72 inches), weight (64 and 74 pounds) and price ($8,405 and $10,160).