doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Need recommendation for small gun safe

I just built a small equipment storage room for my hunting partner, Fire code sheetrock inside and out, steel entry door. He purchased a safe at Costco, it was marked "WINCHESTER" and was a nice unit for $400. We bolted it to the concrete floor and to the wall. Then installed heavily built shelves on the exposed side and above to make oil-canning it more difficult.

take a minute and look on youtube to see how easy it is to get in a Sentry Safe electronic lock. One minute with a thin metal strip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D33T4GOtB-U

Re the Sentry line, emphasis is on "budget." I am not aware of a better safe at that price point. Mine were less than $200 each as scratch/dent items, including fire lining. You can always add a steel bar and high quality padlock to slow down the perps. Depends on your needs and the specific installation. Better than a StackOn cabinet for not much more money.

Some very interesting info on youtube concerning UL ratings of safe locks. One 30 minute speech I listened to was from a lock manipulation (safe cracking) convention. Takeaway for general buying public was: bigger and heavier is better. The slower your cops are the heavier your safe needs to be. General consensus is that 750# is a good starting point. Also that a good safe is made even better by a good burglar alarm system for the premises, the key being that if a burglar sets the alarm off but knows he can open your safe in less than the response time of the cops, you're done. Any safe can be defeated, how long it takes can be the most important thing.

Only reason I'd ever buy a lightweight, cheap "safe" would be to act as a decoy.

SRH

Given time all safes can be defeated and that includes my "hidden" gun room with a safe door. You want to make it hard work or too time consuming. Alarms are good if you have close neighbors to notice or a police force that can respond in a very few minutes. 15 minutes is too long and if you live in the country 15 minutes may be above average speed of reaction. A safe, alarm system, good dog to raise he77 and a few poison snake could not hurt.

If you can not do that you need to try other things. I rely on deception and what I hope is a thief who is not well informed or prepared. Given inside information no system will work. All you can do is all you can do. If you are on a limited budget you need to be very creative with deception and camouflage. Let him find something, just not the items you wish to protect the most. Split up you guns into several locations. Lock some up, hide a few in another room(s) and try to make it hard to get all the guns without an exhaustive search. And be careful what you post on the internet, Facebook or Twitter. I post under a pen name and under a false address most of the time. All in an effort to keep a reasonable low profile.

Thanks to everyone for the very well thought out and helpful advice. It gave me a lot to think about, will consider carefully before buying. So far, am thinking a heavier and better quality safe than what I first had in mind. But not larger, as I am resolved not to buy another gun, without trading or selling one. That resolve may be an example of "Ruthless intentions of future discipline", but I still intend to try. Actually, I'm trying now, yesterday I took in a Remington SP10 to the local gun shop, the owner is going to get back with me on how we could trade on a gun safe. Will hate to see my 10 ga. go, although neither my son nor I have shot it in over 12 years.

if you are married, I hope you didn't promise this to your spouse. Furthermore, don't engrave the above in stone. We understand, but many of us have given up all discipline. It has nothing to do with need, btw. Or at least need for another gun...

Guns are like potato chips. When you acquire a taste for them one is never enough and just one more never satisfies your hunger for them. Buy small and see if it helps limit your numbers. Perhaps your luck will be better than most in that regard. If not you can always buy another safe.