The tacticalgear and qualitytacticalgear subreddits are good places to start looking. I have a condor plate carrier that i purchased for about $60. It's not the best thing in the world, but it holds my plates. Find something that has decent reviews and a good price by looking through those subreddits. I had a friend with a similar carrier to mine and tried it out and decided it would be good enough for me.
I did a lot of research trying to find good level 4 plates. What i learned is, don't buy steel, especially from the AR500 company. It's heavy and bullets splatter when they hit without a good anti-spalding coating on them. Ceramic plates are much better because they trap the bullet. RMA Armament has the cheapest ceramic plates i could find. The model #1155 is heavy, but is relatively cheap, ceramic, and actually nij level 4 certified. I purchased two. One in front and one in the back of my carrier. Hesco also carries quality hard plates but they are more expensive. If you are willing to spend the money, you can get lighter plates that offer the same level of protection. In the end i spent over $300 for minimal armor set, you probably won't be able to get much cheaper than that. Don't cheap out on plates that aren't nij certified because they probably won't work if you get shot.
This document details the nitty-gritty details about armor certification: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/223054.pdf
Here's a link to the list of all armor manufacturers maintaining a certification for one or more products: https://cjtec.org/compliance-testing-program/compliant-product-lists/ (long load). Alternative link that displays in full-screen: https://www.justnet.org/app/tims/CPLReport.aspx (very long load time)
One last piece of advice, find some armor you can try on from a friend just to get an idea of what you might need. Worst thing would be to buy it and it doesn't fit your body well.
I know it can be hard to find someone like that you can trust but it could save you a lot of trouble.
The tacticalgear and qualitytacticalgear subreddits are good places to start looking. I have a condor plate carrier that i purchased for about $60. It's not the best thing in the world, but it holds my plates. Find something that has decent reviews and a good price by looking through those subreddits. I had a friend with a similar carrier to mine and tried it out and decided it would be good enough for me.
I did a lot of research trying to find good level 4 plates. What i learned is, don't buy steel, especially from the AR500 company. It's heavy and bullets splatter when they hit without a good anti-spalding coating on them. Ceramic plates are much better because they trap the bullet. RMA Armament has the cheapest ceramic plates i could find. The model #1155 is heavy, but is relatively cheap, ceramic, and actually nij level 4 certified. I purchased two. One in front and one in the back of my carrier. Hesco also carries quality hard plates but they are more expensive. If you are willing to spend the money, you can get lighter plates that offer the same level of protection. In the end i spent over $300 for minimal armor set, you probably won't be able to get much cheaper than that. Don't cheap out on plates that aren't nij certified because they probably won't work if you get shot.
Thank you, this is great and I will save it for later!
This document details the nitty-gritty details about armor certification: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/223054.pdf
Here's a link to the list of all armor manufacturers maintaining a certification for one or more products: https://cjtec.org/compliance-testing-program/compliant-product-lists/ (long load). Alternative link that displays in full-screen: https://www.justnet.org/app/tims/CPLReport.aspx (very long load time)
One last piece of advice, find some armor you can try on from a friend just to get an idea of what you might need. Worst thing would be to buy it and it doesn't fit your body well.
I know it can be hard to find someone like that you can trust but it could save you a lot of trouble.
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here is the long answer on why not to buy AR500 plates
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