Do you know exactly where guns are stored in your house? Storing guns safely within your house or apartment is extremely important. Guns should always be stored in a manner that limits unauthorized access. Guns which are left unsecured could be prime targets for theft or unauthorized "borrowing," and they can be hazardous if handled by somebody who is not trained on gun safety concepts. You because the gun's owner have a responsibility to keep them from the wrong hands. It's possible you could be held liable for bad things that happen as a result of neglecting to secure your gun. For this reason also to protect yourself from theft, it is just a good idea to keep guns securely stored in your home. There are many different approaches for effectively storing guns and keeping them out from the wrong hands. A few solutions are free-standing safes, mini gun safes, and built-in gun room/closet.
Free-standing gun safes are exactly what the name implies. They stand upright on their own when placed on an even surface, and are completely enclosed on all sides except for one door, which may be opened by entering a secret combination. These safes, depending on their size and dimensions, can take between six and many dozen guns, documents, and valuables. Among the benefits of a free-standing gun safe is that it can also be used to store documents along with other valuables along with guns. The walls of these safes may also sometimes be insulated with a fire-resistant material, that may help protect your guns and valuables in the case of a home fire. Fire resistance ratings for these safes are normally measured in the number of minutes that the safe can withstand the temperature of a fully-involved home fire. Visit this website will probably pay several hundred dollars for an entry-level safe that has no fire protection and thin walls. Larger safes and the ones with fire-resistant qualities can easily cost between $600 and $2,500 dollars, based on size and fire resistance rating.
Most devices used to store guns, are secured with a mix rather than key because keys can fall into the wrong hands. Combinations cannot fall into the wrong hands unless they are shared with others verbally or in writing. However, people might be able to watch over your shoulder and find out what your combination is if they're in the same room and have the chance to see you open the safe. Safes could be built with mechanical combination locks (usually the lower-cost safes have these) or digital combination locks with a 10-digit keypad. It really is normally possible to re-program these digital combination locks with a new combination. If possible, it is just a good idea to improve the combination on a gun safe periodically (every 90 days or every time you imagine that someone may have seen you open it). Additionally, there are safes out there that have biometric scanning devices installed on the fasten. These are programmed to read a finger or thumb print, making them potentially better than other styles of locking mechanisms.
"Mini" gun safes are an option for those who need quick-access to 1 of their smaller guns, or for individuals who own only one gun for home defense. These kind of safes typically cost between $150 and $300 based on the type of locking mechanism and degree of security (those that have Biometric scanners will typically cost more). They are typically large enough to hold one full-sized pistol like a Ruger GP100, Springfield XD9 or Glock 21. The advantage of this sort of safe is that it is cheaper than a larger safe but nonetheless helps maintain one gun out from the wrong hands. These safes can be purchased in models that take a seat on a flat surface and in addition in models which might be mounted on or recessed into a wall.
If you purchase a safe for the home, you should pick the location for it meticulously. You may not want it out in the open, as this can advertise to all or any who see it that there surely is a gun inside; this might encourage break-ins, as thieves prefer to steal things that are easily re-sold such as guns and electronic equipment. You need to locate your gun safe in the room or area what your location is most likely to be during a break-in, or in the room or area what your location is most likely to visit first when something bad happens. For example, when there is a central hallway away from exterior doors that you'll probably walk down if you hear a noise in the middle of the night, that may be a good place to mount a recessed mini wall safe (you can even mount this type of safe in a wall, then hang an image in front of it if you don't want people to be familiar with it). Check with your local law enforcement office and find out what types of break-ins typically happen in your community. Especially ask questions in what time of day break-ins occur. You could be surprised to find in many cases that break-ins frequently happen throughout the day rather than in the center of the night time. That information, coupled with your understanding of what times of day you're normally at home, will have a direct effect on where you decide to place a quick-access safe. If most break-ins in your town happen at night, mounting a mini quick-access safe on your own bedside table could be a good idea. In the event that you expect that someone might make an effort to break in when you are at work in your house office where you may spend most of your day, then you should probably keep carefully the safe in that location.
For an additional degree of security, most safes have the ability to be bolted right down to either a floor or a wall so that they cannot be easily stolen or moved. That is especially important when considering the purchase of a "Mini" gun safe. Since a "Mini" safe could possibly be easily carried away to another location and broken open, you should bolt these types of safes securely to a table, wall, or inside a drawer so they cannot be stolen or moved as easily.
Another option for security is to secure your guns within a locked closet or room. Closet doors and interior-room doors within a home are usually flimsy double-wall hollow construction and can not hold up to much abuse. If someone really wants to get through among those doors, they will achieve this without much trouble. However, you can replace a closet door or room door with a strong, solid wood or metal door to make it harder to break in. If this door is then equipped with an electronic push-button combination deadbolt lock (these cost between $100 and $200 and may be purchased from Lowe's or Home Depot), then you have just made yourself a built-in safe. The advantage to the technique is that should you have a lot of guns and also have a downstairs basement room that has concrete walls, you can stretch your budget by converting a spare room to a secure "Gun Room" rather than spending $5,000 to $10,000 on multiple gun safes. The disadvantage to the technique is that you will spend about as much money on a new door and door lock as you would spend on a safe that could hold a few dozen guns, which means you really would need to have a lot of guns for this to make sense financially. There's another consideration - YOU MUSTN'T secure the closet or room door with a keyed lock (keys could be misplaced or left unsecured) and you cannot consider going this route without installing a heavy-duty exterior-style door or commercial-grade steel door. You ought not consider achieving this to any rooms with windows.
You may also see or hear of gun racks that can be locked or gun racks which have provisions for securing guns by attaching them with cable locks. These kind of gun racks are the least secure solution other than leaving a gun lying around out on view. They are able to easily be removed from walls unless they are bolted directly into wall studs. Many of these racks are made from wood, which is easy to break or cut through. Most usually do not prevent a gun from being loaded or fired even though it is locked into the rack. There might be some people who believe that this is a secure enough solution because of their particular situation, however in general it is not safe to store guns in a rack, even one that can be locked.
Remember that when looking at different solutions, you'll typically get everything you pay for - this is also true when searching for secure gun storage. The lowest priced gun safe can be going to be smaller, weaker and simpler to break into, and can offer the lowest degree of protection from fire damage. Selecting a good brand name is also important, because you want to buy a quality unit that's not going to malfunction or fail. Some examples of good quality manufacturers are (not in virtually any particular order, which is not all-inclusive): Sentry, Remington, American Security, Liberty, Patriot Safes, Stack-On, Winchester, Browning, and Barska. Some safe manufacturers will offer better versions of particular sizes or models than other manufacturers, and some companies may offer certain features while some do not. For instance, at the time of this article's writing, companies such as Remington, Browning and American Security are more centered on making larger safes with electronic keypad combination code access, while companies such as Barska offer products which are smaller (holding one to three pistols) and are built with Biometric fingerprint scanner access control.
Hopefully this information can help you make the best decision about how and where you can store guns in your home. Remember to talk to all family members concerning the importance of gun safety and educate them on basic concepts. Everyone should treat every gun as if it were loaded and keep the gun pointed in a safe direction; never point a gun at any person or anything you do not desire to shoot; keep your finger off the trigger; and always keep and store guns unloaded and from ammunition if possible. Establish with all family members a procedure for what to do if they look for a gun that is not locked up securely, or should they notice that a gun safe is not completely shut and locked. Normally the best steps to follow are to leave the region immediately and notify a parent or adult right away so that they can take care of the problem.
You could find out more information, including schedules needless to say offerings and free training materials, at [http://www.aafirearmstraining.com]. We've trained hundreds of men, women and children over the years through classroom and online instruction. Follow us on twitter @aafirearmstng and check us from Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/All-American-Firearms-Training-Group-of-Columbus-GA/183355874520. This short article was written by Patrick Sleem, owner of All American Firearms Training in Columbus GA. He could be a nationally ranked marksman on the Army Reserve Marksmanship Team and something of the "Presidents Hundred," an honor conferred only to the most notable 100 competitive target shooters in the United States at the National Rifle Association's National Championship Match.