Why Legacy Barricades

“Children are our legacy”

Unfortunately, the threat of school shootings is something we as parents, teachers, and communities will have to contend with. I started Legacy Barricades because I wanted to create something that could bring a new level of security to children in a way that has not been done before.

After serving 10 years in uniform in active-duty military, as a federal agent, and sheriff's deputy I decided to pursue the freedom of being my own boss. In February of 2018, I watched, in horror, the footage of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida. In those moments, I had so many thoughts around why we aren’t building our schools to protect our kids from these horrific acts, yet we spend so much effort on making school buildings and classrooms built to withstand tornadoes, hurricanes, other natural disasters, and fires. We are building schools with essentially bullet-proof walls and unbreakable fire-rated doors and frames, yet we aren’t locking the doors effectively to keep our kids safe during violent attacks. As a breacher in the military, I know from experience that a school would be nearly impossible to breach each door if they were locked down correctly, so why not build our schools to keep attackers from getting to our kids?

To answer my own question, I began to research, and this is where the Legacy Barricades journey began. Initially, I was content to find that there were several barricade devices on the market. However, after months of research, I was motivated to provide a system that was fully compliant with all state and federal code. This is where my mission began to develop something that would bring an entirely new level of security to our kids, while also complying with all codes to make it the safest possible device developed.

I quickly got to work with a prototype and asked my local fire department to evaluate the device and try to breach a training door with the device installed. After many tries and testing, the fire inspector believed my barricade would indeed pass code. In the months that followed, we were officially approved by the Michigan Bureau of Fire Services and the Michigan Bureau of Construction Codes. After obtaining these approvals, the State of Michigan unanimously passed HB4689 making barricades officially legal in the state with the requirement that all designs must be approved by both bureaus to be legal.

Legacy Barricades is now working diligently with the federal government and several other states to comply with similar laws and approval requirements to ensure that any door barricades that are installed to protect our children in our schools are the safest, code compliant, and protective devices against violent acts built and available.