i am glad you asked my fellow freedom infused american! as you well know the times are troubled with all of the gay muslim democrats going around mass murdering people, and these same illiberal scum that seek to steal our guns ALSO want to make it so that only government agencies can buy body armor, they do not want you to be able to defend yourself AND want you to have the highest probability of getting killed to!
to that end you are talking two different types of vests, for wearing out in public you want a concealable vest like cops use and they typically weigh 5 - 6 pounds. i would get one made out of the new lightweight fibers like spectra or a blend vs just traditional kevlar and it would be in the 3a rating, a rating of 2 is sufficient for most pistol loads but will be defeated by high velocity classics like the 7.62x25 tokarev (not very common anymore though) or the newer **** like .357 sig (very common) or the 5.7x28, the 3a has a good chance at stopping anything from a pistol and will frequently stop lower power rifle rounds if it first has to go through something like a car or a dead democrat that chose to die in place while creating a large pool of urine at his feet at a public venue instead of arming and defending himself.
you WILL want a trauma plate, getting hit by anything heavy grain at close range without one and you will have busted ribs/internal bleeding which will stun you and limit your ability to return fire.
you will want to get the side panels so your ribs are protected.
second chance is one of the oldest and still best manufacturers of vests in this country and the CEO is a hardcore american freedom lover as well that deserves our business and has helped advocate against restrictive body armor laws for civilians even though most of his customer base is from the law enforcement field.
he has also demonstrated his belief in his product by shooting himself several hundreds times over the decades while wearing one of his vests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIhyETXW1u0http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwBLL7Z3OvUsecond chance is just plain old good body armor and will last for years.
if you really want high end and max concealment there are several clothing companies that make regular looking suits. jackets, street clothes etc that have level 2a protection built in, not as good as level 3 or 3a obviously but then again the best body armor you have is the one your wearing not the one in the closet,
keep your **** stored out of the sunlight and wash the carrier frequently because depending on the blend it will deteriorate in sunlight or from the salts in your sweat, newer ones supposedly dont have this problem just like newer magazine springs "supposedly" do not take a set if you leave them fully loaded. i choose to call ***** and leave my mags 3 under capacity, the same applies to vests imo.
for a military style get up your options are only limited really by how much weight you want to carry, the ceramic plates (or the newer titanium plates) will up armor you to where you can take repeated hits with a .308 and even 1 - 2 from a .30-06 or 7.62x51 over the vitals where the plate is however you will be pretty jacked up after eating one of those, smaller stuff like .223 and the 7.62x39 from all of the obama bin ladens however you should be able to recover and deliver about 30 liberating doses of high velocity religious freedom in quick succession.
also be aware that most body armor does not work very well against edged weapons, however some manufacturers have placed a polymer lattice into their vests to help with that, in the "old days" cops would address that at times by getting one of those mesh butcher aprons and wearing that with the vest.
you will also need head protection because if you got hit in the forehead while defending our homeland you would only be twice as smart as claeyt and that would be a travesty, you can buy the exact same PASGT helmet used by our military many places online for around 200 - 300 bucks and those will stop a .357 magnum, it will not stop a direct rifle hit however the slope combined with the armor can stop glancing hits or help deflect a hit that would have otherwise killed you.
groin protection is always a good option as well because if your junk gets blown off why bother having survived in the first place, you would have to write articles about loud and terrifying ar15 assault bazookas then and thats no good for anyone.