Upon discovery of the shocking laws of my country Australia where it is illegal to protect myself with military grade body armour I have decided to seek your advice, oh vendettasphere!

I call on all crafty, liberal and free-thinking Americans and persons from the wider free world to help me come up with a loop-hole whereby I can legally or practically protect my jiblets from gunfire down-under!

If I could just offer some advice, it has been shown through rigorous testing that historically speaking this approach was unsuccessful:



So I will need alternative suggestions.

Magnets. I'd say human shield, because they're quite plentiful, but that's still "body" "armor."

The bodies of dead Serco.

The bodies of dead Serco.

HEY! No on-topic conversation here, this is Off-Topic.

Well, the flaw with Kelly's setup was that he didn't protect his arms and legs, and eventually somebody figured that out and managed to hit them. He soaked up a lot of bullets with the armor first though; it definitely prolonged his life and that is the measure of success for armor. The only perfect defense is to simply not get hit in the first place. But as far as loopholes to your upside-down laws go, I'd consider looking into whether they cover riot-shields. Also, look into chainmail. The letter of the law seems to me that it would forbid chainmail, but I suspect it's something that nobody would actually bother to complain about. While chainmail probably wouldn't help against bullets, it does work quite well against knives.

Otherwise: contact your local smuggling ring, I guess. You could try coming up with homebrew plate armor, but it would probably be difficult to conceal. Then again, I guess I have no idea regarding the feasibility of making homemade soft-armor. Maybe that's easier than I think.

What exactly the armor is intended to be used for also matters though. For gang operations like Kelly's happening in today's world, I'd place a higher focus on mobility than overall defense. Staging a shoot-out, killing all the cops, and then walking away is not an option anymore, at least in developed nations. There are too many cops and they move too fast. Better to be gone before they even arrive.

For defending my home during a riot, on the other hand, I might favor more defense since I wouldn't be intending to be running around trying to lose pursuers. I might also be interested in things that are more fire-retardant than average.

For my current every-day life in someplace like Knoxville, I wouldn't even bother with armor at all unless I was a high-profile person or planning to do something very controversial (or be around somebody else fitting that description). Which is fortunate since I don't own any armor and don't have the budget for it right now. But is it something I intend to get eventually, just in case? Absolutely.

Nobody should need armor, any more than they should need fire extinguishers or first-aid kits. But unfortunately, shit happens.

If you're worried about prolonging your life, buy a boat, fill it with as much food supplies as possible, and live out your life on the ocean, going back on land every once in a while to buy more food.

You are thinking in absolutes. Real life is analog. Would you tell somebody who tests his fire alarms that he should just go camp out on a pad of concrete instead? Accounting for a risk is not the same as being utterly terrified of it, spending every bit of effort toward preventing it. Buying a bulletproof vest is a one-time cost of maybe a few hundred dollars. It's not some huge overreaction. Some people might decide that the risk isn't enough to warrant them buying one, and that is perfectly fine. What is not fine is for them to prevent somebody else from making his own decision.

For example, the risk that I might personally need body armor is currently low enough that, at my income level, it is not worth buying one. If I had twice as much income (easily accomplished by switching to full-time work), the relative cost decreases substantially, to the point where my slightly more paranoid than normal mind judges it just barely worth buying. To somebody making twice that again, it would easily be worth the cost even to a normal mind if they bothered to actually think about it.

I wear my seat-belt when I drive. I'm unlikely to ever need it, but the burden is very low and the potential payoff is very large, so I do it. That's what I'm saying here. There is little risk of needing body armor currently in most developed countries, but the cost of ownership over the long-term is very low. The upfront purchase price can be high at the lower incomes, but as your income increases, that also becomes lower to the point where it becomes even less burdensome than the total lifetime trouble of wearing a seat-belt.

The reason they seek to ban guns (and body armor) has nothing to do with public safety. It's to ensure the superiority of police over anyone they deem to be a criminal and decide to kill.

How does that have nothing to do with public safety? The purpose of the police is to serve and protect the public so it's in the interest of public safety that the police have superior weapons and armour so they can accomplish that.

Also there's no fucking way a riot shield if cool. You'd so be arrested for carrying one down the street.

I agree with arf, you guys gotta wear your tinfoil hats. the goverment is out to get you, maaaaan. the illermineti control the police.
Also, if you're concerned with protecting yourself, body armor is kinda useless unless you have time to put it on or you wear it all the time. Otherwise it's pointless.

What if you carried a reinforced door down the street, TRS? Also, what is the Australian stance on cosplayers?

Snake, that is true for the case of "random dude randomly decides to shoot you at random time", but there are plenty of other scenarios where you do have time to put it on, including riots, civil war, foreign invasion, and looting/chaos/anarchy after a natural disaster.

Also, Arf isn't being paranoid. I do tend toward slight paranoia, but he's just being reasonable. Seriously, do you think that wearing armor hurts anybody? The only reason to ban somebody from wearing armor is if you're afraid they might use that armor to make it harder for you to take them down if they commit a crime. And that is a valid concern on the police's part.

But of course, that sort of ban is punishing people before they even commit a crime, including the vast majority of people who aren't going to commit a crime in the first place. And we do restrict felons' access to armor here in the USA, we just don't restrict innocent citizens.

When I say walk down the street I mean if you were walking down the street in a populated area with a police presence and were spotted they would probably stop to question you and that might lead to an arrest. It's hard to say but if it was clearly a riot shield i'd be surprised if you weren't at least questioned.

There was a case earlier where someone was reported walking down a suburban street with a replica shotgun and got charged with a weapons offence for that. It's not analogous to that exactly but that's the kinda test i'm thinking of here in terms of reasonable levels of social and legal acceptability.

Yeah if its a costume I cant imagine there would be any questioning. I also can't imagine if you wore a bullet proof vest around there would be much concern amongst the public, even if it was obviously a bullet proof vest, however if you did walk past an officer with it i'd say that could definitely lead to an arrest. If there is a clear ulterior purpose for instance in the case of cosplay then its less likely that something that would appear to be a bullet proof vest would be investigated; though i'm not really interested in street testing this for the sake of argument, i'm just stating a view.

Maybe your police serve and protect. That's not always the case here in the land of for-profit prisons and the war on drugs.

The government is out to get you.

The US government spies on people and labels them terrorists for political activism.

The Australian government outlaws women with small breasts making mating documentaries.

As to body armor, I recommend a spectra-sweater, woven from fishing line made from the material.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-molecular-weight_polyethylene

http://www.charkbait.com/cs/cshL_Spectra.htm

you want me to protect myself from bullets with fishing wire?!?!?!?!?

Also it isn't outlawed it's just not allowed a rating. There's a difference. I'm not expert on the subject but you can legally purchase pornography with small breasted women in Australia it just wouldn't be allowed on commercial television.

You can definitely see small breasts on the ABC (government owned television station) I have seen them myself. They were pretty.

Well, that particular fishing line is made out of the same type of plastic used in some ballistic armor, so I'd say it's worth a try. I mean, if you tried to make homemade armor you'd be doing a lot of trial and error anyway.

How would you even test that? "Here, shoot me and see if I die"

Have you never watched Mythbusters? You'd make a torso out of ballistics gel, strap the vest onto that, and then shoot it and see how much damage it takes. Initially you'd mainly be testing for penetration, so you wouldn't need to worry about fake bones or anything, but once you have it tough enough to catch the bullet, then you'd want to start working on making sure the force is distributed widely enough to avoid taking too much blunt-force damage. So at that point you might want to start adding fake ribcages or something to it until you know how much leather or whatever you're going to back the vest with.

In countries that forbid firearms, you'd have to improvise some kind of machine that mechanically impacts it with a similar momentum and area-of-contact as a bullet.

Sadly, we cannot all be this Troy Hurtubise.