RSC/Safes... Unsure What To Buy

[matt11]

Is your house on a slab or crawl space? Slab should be no issues with weight, crawl space you may be able to look into some floor safes you can hide.

[V1x3nV]

Spider filled crawlspace in the house

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[smitdawg]

I have a browning medallion 36 gun and it's only about 600 lbs, good floor should handle it. I agree on the size, mine was perfect 15 years ago but with adding guns, coin collection, wife's jewelry, etc it is now overflowing. Liberty makes nice stuff.

Keep on mind all you are doing with a safe is stopping the lazy criminals and slowing down the determined ones. Bolt it to the floor/wall and don't worry about it.

Oh and a golden rod is a must.

[LivinTheDream]

I picked up one of these from Costco(spent a little less than $250), took out the drawer and put the shelf in the center. I've got 8 pistols in it but I can easily fit 3x as many AND it can be bolted to the floor. The shotgun I'd just put a trigger lock on and throw it in the closet.
http://m.costco.com/Sentry[emoji768]Safe-1.23-Cubic-Ft.-Electronic-Big-Bolt-Fire-Safe[emoji768].product.100021781.html


Disclaimer....I do have one Glock, a 30s. It's a .45 and I'm an equal opportunity.45 owner! lol

[kicker42]

Liberty safe.

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[V1x3nV]

These are all great suggestions, I'm starting to lean towards concealment vs safe considering some of these things. But still thinking through all of the options .

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[flylo]

Make a sofa safe from a nice pull out sofa by making or have made a steel with good locks or find a Job Box that is the right size. Out of sight out of mind. Bolt it to the floor. A friend of mine did a freezer & worked very well. You can by "safe furniture but it's expensive & easy to build. Just an idea.

[AxlMyk]

Our Daughter and SIL have a large Lincoln. They put it in a corner and braced the floor in the crawlspace.
Some safes will lock up tight, requiring a locksmith to open, if you tip them over too far. Consider that when moving one.

[VIGILANT]

I picked up one of these from Costco(spent a little less than $250), took out the drawer and put the shelf in the center. I've got 8 pistols in it but I can easily fit 3x as many AND it can be bolted to the floor. The shotgun I'd just put a trigger lock on and throw it in the closet.

How to Open a Sentry Safe in Less Than 5 Seconds
https://youtu.be/ApJQ2wcYjBo

[Maxwelhse]

These are all great suggestions, I'm starting to lean towards concealment vs safe considering some of these things. But still thinking through all of the options .

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My personal opinion is that if your firearms are currently not secured at all, get them secured as fast as you can in any way that you can. An old trunk with a padlock is better than nothing.

With that said, I'm also in the camp of having a cheap, junk, easy to break into, consumer grade gun safe. My logic here is:

1 - It's better than nothing by miles and also helps keep honest, but curious, people out of trouble in your home.
2 - It still LOOKS like any other safe to 99.99% of people. The typical methed up thief isn't going to spend hours on YouTube figuring out how to break every cheap safe in the world. They're going to snatch and grab the other obvious expensive stuff laying around (like TVs, stereos, cash, prescription drugs, or whatever else they want) and not screw with ANY safe. They're also going to toss your entire house, including flipping over couches and such, so "hiding" guns is something I can't really endorse, unless you get insanely crafty about it. Like hinged false floors that lead down to a compartment in the crawl space. An expensive safe would be cheaper.
3 - A professional theft ring will take whatever they want regardless of what you do. In your case, they would cut the floor joists and wall studs out, take the safe, and leave your house with a hole in it. That's 5 minutes or less of effort with a sawsall, a couple of guys, and a cart.

Sooo.. If the issue is that you can't afford a "good" safe, buy a cheap one. I'd like to upgrade my safe at some point, but right now I feel that filling it, and hardening the overall security of my house as a whole, is a better investment. If my house is the hardest one to break into on the street (which right now it probably is) they'll move along.

In any event, I probably would brace the floor under it. It's cheap and fairly easy to do and its better to do it now than have problems later. Keep in mind the weight of the safe, the all guns/accessories/ammo it might ever hold and 2 people (because someone else may be standing there next to you waiting to be armed while you're opening the safe) when you do it. You could be pretty easily talking about 1000-1500lbs pretty quickly in a fairly concentrated area. I might also consider pouring a couple of pylons of concrete in the crawl space that you can sink some log chains down into and tie them off to the safe as well. Again, it's pretty cheap and easy to do (it wouldn't need to be pretty, it just has to weigh a ton and be strong) and is some good peace of mind. A buddy of mine did exactly this, except he knocked down a wall and then later rebuilt it, to install the biggest Liberty safe in a room in his house I have ever seen. To say he's a collector puts it lightly.

You mentioned gun insurance too... Unless you've already talked to your insurance company, you may be in for a shock. It would cost me $250 for $1000 of coverage and I can only buy $2500 of coverage total. My company is the same way with hand tools, cash, and jewelry too and when I called around no one else was much different. The best deal going is the NRA insurance, and you can buy as much of that as you want and you get $2500 included with your membership (which also covers accessories and mags, which home owner's insurance won't.. Some call it personal property, some call it a firearm, but none of them even want to talk about it which is about the last hassle you need if your house burns down) for $40 annual dues (or "free" if you become a life member). At one point I was carrying $10k total (so $7500 extra), I think, and it was under $200 a year. So.. I would probably put some of the money you'd spend on a fire rated safe, which may or may not save your stuff, into buy insurance that WILL replace it if lost.

I hate to burden you with even more things to think about, but there is a lot of angles to consider here. The one take away I do hope you have is to get a safe, any safe, to immediately secure your firearms from crackheads and other amateur thieves, which is the vast majority of B&E jerks.