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I saw a History Channel show the other day that talked about Richard Davis.

I thought his story was really interesting. I had no idea.

"History

The concept for Second Chance® soft concealable body armor was conceived in a dark alley on Detroit's far west side on a summer night over a quarter century ago. Richard Davis, owner of a small local pizzeria, was making a delivery when he was attacked and shot. Davis returned fire wounding two of his three attackers. Weeks later while recovering from his wounds, Davis business was burned to the ground.

The '69 shooting incident inspired Davis to research and develop a means of personal ballistic protection. The result was a soft, flexible, concealable panel of ballistic nylon material layered to stop common street handgun firepower. The ballistic material, first generation in the body armor industry, was similar to that found in flak jackets worn in Korea and Vietnam. By taking the bullet resistant panel, large enough to protect the wearer's vital organ area both front and back, and placing it under an outer garment hidden from a possible assailant, the wearer was given a "second chance" to survive a ballistic attack and retaliate. Davis realized the law enforcement community needed his new invention the most. The next hurdle was to convince the streetwise cop that this soft ballistic panel would stop bullets.

Davis did this in dramatic fashion by performing live shooting demonstrations on his own torso to prove his soft body armor invention worked. Law enforcement walked away from these demonstrations truly believing that Richard Davis "stood behind" his bullet resistant products. The first Second Chance® "save" was Detroit undercover street cop, Gary Boiger, who wasn't shot, but stabbed in his Model "X" armor. The first shooting "save" was Detroit officer Ron Jagielski, when in 1973 his Model "Y" stopped a .38 slug.

During the '70's, Davis experimented with many kinds of ballistic material, finding DuPont Kevlar® to be the best. In 1973 DuPont Kevlar® 29/49 was commercialized in the Second Chance® Model "Y" armor. This remained the industry standard until third generation Kevlar® 129 was commercialized in 1989 and introduced in the Second Chance® SUPERfeatherlite®. By the end of 1989 Second Chance® had over 450 "saves" of American law enforcement officers.

It wasn't until 1993 when Second Chance® introduced ARAFLEX®IV in its fourth generation Monarch® family of wearable body armor did the industry sit up and look to Second Chance® as the leader in technology innovations as well as documented "saves", now over 525. Among the Monarch family was the +P+, where Kevlar® CorrectionalTM Material was combined with Araflex to make a dual ballistic/slash resistant unit of soft armor. Also introduced in the '90's was superior 3rd generation SC229® armor featuring Akzo's Twaron® T-2000 microfilament aramid fiber.

When DuPont introduced Kevlar® CorrectionalTM fabric in 1995, Second Chance® used proprietary construction methods to build stand alone stab-resistant soft body armor that passed the "dreaded California ice-pick test". In the new millennium PRISM SPIKE armor was created to pass the spike certification for the NIJ 0115.00 Standard in all three protection levels.

Second Chance® has become the world leader in wearable, concealable, soft body armor with over 930 SAVES as of July 2004. With industry innovations in patented fiber, fabric and construction methods Second Chance® vigorously entered the new millennium with the confidence that continued success will only breed greater success."

http://www.secondchance.com/content.asp?contentID=1