imported post
It is legal for law-abiding citizens to purchase, possess, and wear body armour in all 50 states, with one minor hitch. In Connecticut, it must be a face-to-face sale (no mail order) unless you are LE or active duty military.
In MD, it is perfectly legal to own and wear body armor if you are a law-abiding citizen. However, it IS illegal to wear body armor during the commission of a crime in MD (and in many other states as well). And Maryland law mandates that all persons with a prior CONVICTION for a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime are prohibited from using, possessing, or purchasing bulletproof body armor without a permit issued by the Secretary of the
Maryland State Police.
NOTE: A permit to use, possess, or purchase bulletproof body armor is not required for persons not convicted of a crime of violence or a drug trafficking crime in MD.
But if you wear it externally, you most likely WILL get hassled in states like MD, NY, CT, and CA and in Washington DC...
I've considered purchasing and wearing body armor for some of the jobs I've had that were in dodgy areas. But as of today, I do not own, or wear body armor.
While I was a contractor for the DOJ/NIJ back inthe 1990s I was involved in some of the NIJ Body Armor Testing rounds, and I had access to some very interesting data, footage, and witnessed many body armor tests at Quantico. There is a LOT of crap body armor on the "civilian" market--stuff that is expensive but still won't stop even small caliber handgun rounds. So if you're going to invest in body armor, I would suggest getting stuff that you know is "NIJ Certified". Their certification process is VERY rigorous, and if something gets NIJ Certification, it will be so over-engineered that you can rest assured that it will work in 99.999% of any situation you'll ever find yourself in, on the street. I don't agree with allthe NIJ criteria (like the FBI ammo testing criteria, some of them are just nonsensical) and he NIJ also bases their certification on warranty policies, and has ditched some VERY good armor based on technicalities (like the recently dropped "Dragon Skin" ceramic Level III armor, which exceeds all their performance criteria, their 5-year re-certification process was not "official enough" for NIJ, so they bounced it)...
http://www.justnet.org/Pages/06_CPL.aspx
By the way, I designed the logo and general overall interface for the "JustNet" website, and for NLECTC's newsletter "TechBeat" and received a National Association of Government Communicators "Blue Pencil" for my work...