Local TV station shoots 9mm handgun at athletic cup to make case for bulletproof groins

An NBC affiliate in Missouri shot 9mm rounds into a athletic cup filled with red dye to prove that men's groins were susceptible to bullets without additional armor.

KDSK reported that Jeremiah Raber had spent about $100,000 of his own money to create something called the Armored Nutshellz, which can deflect bullets from 9mm and .22 caliber handguns.

"It is a bullet resistant groin protection device," Raber told the station. "It is the world's strongest cup."

According to the Nutshellz website, the company sells "high end protective cups for police, military, and the professional full contact athlete."

The company highlights dozens of examples of police, security guards, service members and others whose groins could have been saved with a special recipe of Kevlar and a protective fabric called Dyneema.

To prove the product worked, Raber fired several rounds from 9mm and .22 caliber handguns at a Nutshellz protector. Each time, the bullet did little more than dent the groin shield.

But to emphasize their point, the station also placed a regular plastic athletic cup over a balloon filled with liquid red dye. The very first 9mm round penetrated the cup, exploding the red dye and creating simulated bloody mess all over the white target board it was attached to.

And all of Raber's hard work may have paid off because the Pentagon has recently expressed an interest in his Nutshellz.

"I got the email today, from [a division of the Army], saying that, that in August they would like to test my product," he said. "I reached out to them and go the response today, and so in August I'm going to send them some samples and then get a response and see what's going on with it."

Watch this video from KDSK, broadcast May 6, 2013.