As a licensed gun owner, it is important to be absolutely sure about the safety and security of the guns inside your home. Part of being a safe and responsible gun owner is knowing that at any moment, your guns are safe inside your home without having to be concerned about others interfering with or stealing your possessions.
Do gun safes really get stolen, and can this be prevented? Even with your guns locked away in a sturdy gun safe, there is still a risk of burglary. Placement, security, and stabilization of the unit on the floor of your home are just a few ways to help with further securing your gun safe inside your home.
There are many myths about gun safe theft. For instance, it is a common assumption that once guns are locked away in a safe inside a home, there’s no longer any need to worry about gun safe theft. Luckily, there are ways to prevent your gun safe from being stolen, which you will find out when you keep reading.
How To Prevent Your Gun Safe From Being Stolen
There are a wide range of things a gun safe owner can do to protect themselves against theft and burglary.
Things such as bolting a gun safe to the floor, building furniture storage around the safe or placing it inside a piece of furniture such as a wardrobe or dresser, and understanding the layout of your home are all ways in which you can protect yourself and your firearms.
Here is a list of some ways that you can prevent your gun safe from being stolen:
- Bolting the gun safe to the floor
- Building a piece of furniture around the gun safe to disguise it
- Using preexisting pieces of furniture to hide the gun safe from an outsider’s search of the room
First, let’s discuss the ins and outs of bolting a gun safe to the floor. What are the pros and cons of this practice?
The pros of this practice are that the gun safe is more stable and secure, while also being far easier to shift or move at all (especially if the person trying to move it doesn’t know that it is bolted down).
The cons of this practice are that the safe, once bolted down, becomes extremely difficult to move. If it became necessary to move the safe for any reason, it would be a long and taxing process to move it.
However, don’t let this stop you–many people find that bolting their gun safes to the floor is an incredibly effective tactic in ensuring the security of their gun safe.
Building furniture storage around a gun safe or hiding a gun safe inside a piece of furniture is another common tactic.
By building the gun safe into a piece of furniture, it is better disguised and may not be immediately recognized as a safe holding multiple firearms and pieces of weaponry. This has proven to work well in many cases of attempted burglary.
However, there are negative consequences to using this method of protection. For instance, it makes the piece of furniture a nearly permanent staple of whatever room it is placed in. Once the gun safe is built into it, the piece of furniture becomes very difficult to move in any way.
Another consequence of this tactic is the fact that it can be difficult to properly disguise the gun safe inside the piece of furniture, and, once recognized, it becomes that much easier for a burglar to maneuver their way into the safe and gain access to the firearms inside it.
However, this method of protecting a gun safe has proved to be very effective in many instances.
There are many ways to try to prevent or deter gun safe theft, many of which are completely viable options for a wide range of gun safe owners.
What’s important is to find the method that works best for you, your family, and your home, so that instances of gun safe theft can hopefully be prevented.
Do Gun Safes Really Get Stolen?
Unfortunately, simply owning a gun safe does not necessarily guarantee the safety of the guns inside of it.
It is important to recognize that being a responsible owner of a gun safe (and the guns that are stored inside it) involves understanding how to make sure that the security of your safe inside your home is guaranteed.
But the question remains to be asked: “Do gun safes really get stolen?” The answer to this question is: yes, gun safes can be stolen, and they do.
It is important for all gun owners, all gun safe owners, to understand that this is a very real possibility. It is important to explore the different security measures you can use in order to keep a safe and secure household.
The chances of criminal activity affecting your home, your firearms, and your gun safe are somewhat high.
The last thing you would want is for a criminal to break into your home and your gun safe to gain access to your guns and, more than likely, gain access into your home and use your weapons for their own personal benefit.
Here is a list of places where a criminal might look for a gun safe:
- Master bedroom
- Living room
- Garage
- Spaces visible from the front door or back door of the house
- Kitchen
This shows just how vulnerable a home can be to burglars. Therefore, it is critical to explore the variety of ways in which you can better secure your home to prevent the weapons that you trust to protect you from being used against either you or someone else.
What Is The Best Place For A Gun Safe?
One of the most important decisions when buying a gun safe is where in your home you will place it.
This decision will, overall, determine just how much security the gun safe will offer. A few major factors to take into consideration are the potential for fires, water damage, and burglary, to name a few.
What are the most dangerous places to keep a gun safe in a given household?
- The kitchen, due to the fire sources that are usually present (stove, oven, toaster, microwave, etc.)
- Near a fireplace (potential for fire damage to safe)
- In the garage (many flammable objects are stored in garages, which creates the potential for fire damage to a gun safe)
- In the basement (the cold, damp environment of most basements makes them an inopportune place to store a gun safe, because the climate can cause the safe itself and the guns inside it to begin to rust)
While this is not a comprehensive list of all the potential damages and dangers that pose a threat to a gun owner’s gun safe, these are some of the most major dangers that threaten the security of a gun safe. Therefore, it is worthwhile to understand and explore these issues in order to maximize both your personal protection and your household safety.
First, let’s discuss fire damage. It is very important to keep gun safes away from fire sources in a household such as stoves, ovens, or fireplaces. By maintaining a clear distance between a gun safe and a source of fire and heat within a household, the potential for a fire to reach the gun safe is greatly minimized.
Simply keeping the gun safe out of the kitchen and away from the fireplace, however, is not enough. If a room has a door that opens to the kitchen or another fire source, is right next to the kitchen or a fire source, or is above or below the kitchen or a fire source, there is still a hefty risk of fire damage to the gun safe.
One other aspect of the danger involved in keeping a gun safe close to a fire/heat source is the potential for water damage from a fire fighting water hose in the event of a fire. Garages are not commonly thought of as places that pose the threat of fire.
However, garages are areas of a household that tend to store a large number of flammable objects such as paint, oil, and other similar items. This poses a major threat of fire damage, therefore making it an unfit place to install a gun safe.
In general, the safest location for a gun safe to be situated in the event of a fire would be an area that contains concrete slab. This would offer protection, at least for a certain amount of time, from the fire and would better prevent the fire from reaching the gun safe.
Another safe location to place a gun safe would be on the first floor of a house, above something like a crawl space. Though these are not the only safe spaces to install a gun safe, these are highly recommended options if they fit the layout of your home.
If not, taking advantage of the reasons behind these recommendations will help you find a good place inside your household to store your gun safe and still be protected from potential threats to its level of security.
Another important element to focus on in terms of gun safe and firearm damage is water/humidity. It is important for gun safe owners to know that the humidity levels in their gun safe will be similar to the humidity levels of the room where the gun safe is placed. Finding a balance between the risks of fire damage and water damage can be tricky, but it is necessary.
A trick to this is recognizing the characteristics of the typical household basement. The concrete slabs that tend to make up most basements come in handy when trying to protect a gun safe from fire damage.
However, basements are also known for having high humidity levels. This problem can be solved by placing a dehumidifier in the basement to lower the humidity level.
Burglary is another threat to the security that is offered by gun safes. First, recognizing the areas of a house that burglars are typically drawn to when breaking into a house is very useful.
The master bedroom and living room tend to be the first places that burglars check, followed by the office and the garage.
Any area that is visible from the front or back door is also a major risk. The garage is somewhere that is dangerous in particular, due to the fact that people are able to see into it when we come and go, and the fact that garage doors are incredibly easy to open.
Burglars could even use a towing mechanism to tow the gun safe out of the garage in order to steal it.
However, if there is no other viable place to put a gun safe other than the garage, it is a good practice to bolt the safe to the floor in order to prevent a burglary.
Is There A Certain Type Of Gun Safe That Is The Most Secure?
There is an incredibly wide range of gun safes available to gun owners looking to protect their firearms from family members who are not authorized to use them as well as criminals who may try to break into the home in search of access to the homeowner’s firearms.
These gun safes can range anywhere from $30 to over $10,000, depending on what level of security and protection you are looking for.
Ranging between these prices are gun safes that are built for handguns as well as long guns, so that customers are able to find the gun safe that suits their specific needs, depending on what sizes and types of firearms that they own.
Here is a short list of a few options for gun safes that are being offered on the market today:
- Fort Knox FTK-PB Pistol Box Handgun Safe
- Vaultek VT20i & VT10i gun safes
- Stack-On 8 Gun Safe
- V-Line Top Draw Locking Tactical Gun Storage Box
There are a variety of uses for which a gun owner can purchase a gun safe. For example, the Fort Knox FTK-PB Pistol Box Handgun Safe has been rated as the Best Overall Handgun Safe.
This safe costs $240, and offers the consumer a quick access gun safe, 1081 user combinations, and gas struts to assist with the door opening.
Another angle from which a gun owner might be coming in their search for a suitable gun safe is from a high tech safety perspective. The Vaultek VT20i & VT10i gun safes, which tend to cost roughly $230, have been rated as the Best High Tech Gun Safes.
These gun safes offer perks such as anti-pry bars, two point anti-impact latches, interior mounted hinges, and interior security brackets for the ultimate prevention against break-ins, among other things. ****
The high tech advantages to these gun safes offer a unique means of securing the firearms in your home to protect them from theft and unauthorized use.
A gun safe aimed specifically at the storage and protection of long guns is the Stack-On 8 Gun Safe, which has been rated as the Best Long Gun Starter Gun Safe.
For those just starting out in the process of the safe and responsible storage of their long guns, this gun safe is a very suitable option.
For $129, the Stack-On 8 Gun Safe holds eight rifles or shotguns that range anywhere up to 54″ tall.
****The top shelf provides additional storage or is removable; Stack-On’s patented, contoured, and non-marring barrel rests and standoffs for scoped guns allow for one position storage.
The shelf is positioned in the front of the cabinet so that any longer guns that the consumer wants to protect as well can be stored along the back wall of the unit. There is also a foam padded bottom that reduces scratches, and therefore protects the body of the gun even more.
The full-length welded and staked steel piano hinge provides even more security, while the three point locking system with key coded and double-bitted lock allows for greater security.
And last but not least, another major advantage to this gun safe is the bottom of the gun safe which allows for a flush mount to make fastening the safe to the floor much simpler.
For some gun owners, however, a gun safe for traveling in the car is a necessary safety measure to take. The V-Line Top Draw Locking Tactical Gun Storage Box has been rated as the Best Car/Travel Gun Safe, costing roughly $166.
This gun safe offers the consumer steel construction for durability, a five button mechanical lock for quick access, a welded continuous hinge so that the pin cannot be removed, and mounting holes to secure it in place. This last security measure is especially important for the securing of a gun inside a vehicle, due to the amount of motion and movement that a vehicle goes through.
Gun safe theft is not only a real issue, but an issue that is far more common than many people think. By recognizing the issue and understanding the ways to prevent gun safe theft, the threat of gun safe theft is minimized a great deal.
It’s easy to feel confident in the safety of your household gun safe. All it takes is some research, time, and dedication.