Gun safes: opinions and advice needed…

[rockquarry]

Beemer...I used to sell safes and used 'em too. My last one back east was the largest Browning Gold...but I got them wholesale. Here in Wyoming I have 2 Liberty safes. The one in the garage has sn electronic lock...I would recommend a manual combination lock. As far as the safes I have they are dccent but not the "best". A gun safe installed correctly will keep the average crook out unless they have a fair amount of time. The downstairs vault ic 11 x 33 ft. Poured concrete . The door took a while to get mounted...HEAVY. The concrete was thick and HARD...tough to drill. It has a combination lock.The ranch belonged to a LDS family and the room was for their years worth of food storage...and needs more light...I'll leave that to the next folks who own the place. We looked at another place here..1000 acres and the beautiful house had an actual walk in bank vault. The thought to find a good used one is good. I found the mojive biggest Liberty at a yard sale. Locked and no combination. they had the serial stamped in the back. I didn't want it but a friend didI bought it and told him tu bring 5 men and a boy to move it...cause I wasn't helping. and told him anything in it was mine I paid 90 dollars no combinantion They came and got itI got in touch with the company...they ent me the combination. There were 7 22mags and a broken Maarlin M-60 in it. ew3s

I was considering putting a safe in my garage... have you had any problems from extreme heat or cold or anything else? I'm not too concerned about humidity where I live and you probably aren't either.

 

[67tempest]

I purchased two Pella safes in the last year, made in Iowa, both with mechanical lock's, no complaint's.

 

[Kanewpadle]

I was considering putting a safe in my garage... have you had any problems from extreme heat or cold or anything else? I'm not too concerned about humidity where I live and you probably aren't either.

Mine has been in my garage for at least 10 years. No problems.

I have a dehumidifier and use gun socks.

 

[llowry61]

Look at Pendleton. No fireproofing, but a creative internal caddie that spins, so depending on what he has it can hold a lot of guns, and you don't have to move anything to get to what you want.

They have a quit a few offerings some pretty pricey, but worth it in my eyes. All of the "safes" sold through the outdoor store and Pendleton as well are Residential Security Containers. They are easily defeated by professionals with the right tools and a little time. They all focus on the door and the number of locking lugs in it but a pro will grind it open like a tin can.

Mine weighs 1300 pounds and accommodates around 85 guns of which most are pistols.

 

[charlie sherrill]

Most gun safes can be breached. Basically they slow down the thief, which they don't like, and provide some fire protection. If you want more than that you're going to have to pay a lot more for it. My neighbor is a safe specialist. He can open over 90% of gun safes in just a few minutes without tearing them up. The ones he has problems with are the older safes with more steel. He told me they don't make one he can't open. If you lose or mess up your combination $400.00 later he will have your safe open for you. In a 40+ year LEO career I've have seen only two gun safes stolen and or opened. One I later determined was taken by a step son while the step father was working off shore. The other was taken by knocking out a window, wrapping a cable around the safe, and pulling it out of said window with a truck where it hit the ground and then loaded onto the truck. The safe was later found forced open in a wooded area where they had some time to work on it. Both cases were solved. I've seen quite a few commercial safes opened but these guys that do this specialize and know what they are doing and make sure they have the time to do it. They are seldom caught. Most of these guys have died out, security systems are better, so you don't see as many safe crackers as there used to be. Years ago while on foot patrol I walked up on a safe cracker while he was working. He was cracking a safe in a drug store that used to cash payroll checks. It held over $30,000.00 (a lot of money back then) and hard drugs. I watched him through a window for a few minutes while waiting for back up to arrive. I sat in on his interview with an investigator. What he had to say was fascinating stuff. He was from out of state and had found out about this particular safe through his connections with the Dixie Mafia. He would not name his connections. He was proud of his work. He talked about the many safes he had cracked in many different states, although he would not say when or where. He did five years for one a few years ago and seven years for this one. He could have written a book about his career.

 

[Skeet 028]

I was considering putting a safe in my garage... have you had any problems from extreme heat or cold or anything else? I'm not too concerned about humidity where I live and you probably aren't either.

[

The one in the garage I may have to enter the combo 3 or 4 times in cold weather.. The electronic can usually be faster ...but I still think manual combo locks are more secure

 

[CalifEd]

I like my Liberty safes very much, but that brand has changed a lot since I bought mine. For example, they no longer use the same type of electronic lock, and they now use rectangular instead of round locking bars to secure the door. Plus there are so many different manufacturers now…hence my query.

Are the traditional round locking bars superior to the rectangular locking bars?
It seems that having several 3 inch locking bars would be better than the same number of round bars.

 

[Golddollar]

Also, I expect there will be many, many stories, good, bad and horror, about safes coming out of the LA fires.

I have already seen one report that focused on a safe. It was the only thing left standing in the house. From what I could see the safe seemed to survive pretty well.

 

[NYlakesider]

I have already seen one report that focused on a safe. It was the only thing left standing in the house. From what I could see the safe seemed to survive pretty well.

Its not the outside that is important, its what is the status of whats inside! A fire of that degree I think we know the answer!

 

[Dwinetty]

I've been in a similar boat—upgrading my safe after having a couple of Liberty safes for years. They've served me well, but I wanted to check out the latest options. After some research, I ended up sticking with Liberty for my new safe. It's honestly the Best gun safe I've found for my needs. The build quality is top-notch, and the electronic lock is smooth and reliable. I've also had great experiences with their customer service over the years. When I installed mine, I added a Goldenrod as well, and it's been perfect for keeping everything dry. Given the sprinkler system in your home, I'd say you're on the right track with a medium-sized, well-secured safe.

 

[yaktamer]

Every time somebody recommends a vault room, I think of the scene in "RED" where Bruce Willis kicks a hole in the drywall to reach around and open the door to the CIA records vault from the inside.

 

[dockmurgw]

I'm getting ready to build a "my room" addition...looking at one of these to put in there.

Best Gun Safes for Home Gun Storage | SecureIt Gun Storage

 

[TXBryan]

I have a large, mechanical-locking, Liberty I like and have had for quite awhile. I've moved it twice and that got me into gun "cabinets" versus safes. I have four gun cabinets and after some customization they are likely about 80% as difficult to breach as the Liberty.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of the demonstrations I've watched but safes really aren't all that safe apparently. Given the average burglar spends less than ten minutes in a house my Liberty and all my cabinets are probably safe from intrusion. However if someone knows you're gone for the weekend they'd all be easily emptied.

Fire protection is variable. I had a direct experience with the nice, older, "fireproof" Liberty years ago in a structure fire. It was in a metal building with not many things that supported combustion but everything inside the safe was nevertheless a complete loss.
Consequently I sort of gave up on the idea of fire protection.

If your kids have to move it eventually, a top-end cabinet, customized with some additional locks and upgraded furniture, can be a whole lot easier to deal with and provides the same protection from curious children IMHO.

Good luck!

Bryan

Bryan

 

[zeke]

Especially if building a new house. Hidden area, only slightly obfuscated less expensive safe with cheap decoy firearms and tight lips.

 

[AJ]

Every time somebody recommends a vault room, I think of the scene in "RED" where Bruce Willis kicks a hole in the drywall to reach around and open the door to the CIA records vault from the inside.

Only in the movies. The one that I showed in Post #14 is cement block that is filled with concrete and rebar. Won't kick through that. Oh yes, it can be broken into, but it will take time.

 

[TX-Dennis]

Drifting badly here, but . . .

For some reason I am reminded of something from my childhood. My parents had decorative wrought iron panels placed on all the windows of the home I grew up in. That would probably be illegal today due to inability to escape the home in the event of a fire, but times were different then.

My sister, as a teenager, informed her friends that the "bars" were there to keep her from "escaping."

 

[AJ]

Drifting badly here, but . . .

For some reason I am reminded of something from my childhood. My parents had decorative wrought iron panels placed on all the windows of the home I grew up in. That would probably be illegal today due to inability to escape the home in the event of a fire, but times were different then.

My sister, as a teenager, informed her friends that the "bars" were there to keep her from "escaping."

I have seen those in LA and Miami. Neither place would I want to live there!

 

[Smoke]

Many many years ago I worked for a concrete company in Houston Texas. If any of you happen to live in Houston if you ever drive by or have reason to go to the USPS on Lawndale Avenue I did some of the concrete work there.

Anyway, we built a vault room in the post office. Whatever else they did to make it a vault they did after we were done but the Vault room in that particular post office was solid concrete walls with inch thick rebar I think it was 3 inches apart all the way around. You are not going to kick through the wall and reach around and unlock the door.

Having said that, I've talked about this before I think the biggest deterrent to theft you can have is OPSEC. When we moved into this apartment 13 years ago we got here at 7:00 on Saturday morning and the first thing off the truck and into the apartment was our gun cabinet. When we upgraded to the Liberty Safe five or six years later we brought it home in the middle of the day when no one was here and moved it straight into the house. We didn't have anything to do with this but the entrance to our apartment is at the farthest back end of the parking lot and nobody else's apartment overlooks or parking area.
So even when we got our safe off the truck there couldn't have been anybody looking out their apartment window to see what we were doing.

Everybody that lives in this building when I was working has moved out. No one here has ever seen me coming home from work or going to work in my uniform and carrying a gun. None of our neighbors even know that we own guns.

 

[yaktamer]

My sister, as a teenager, informed her friends that the "bars" were there to keep her from "escaping."

One night a couple of years ago my teenage daughter disassembled the frame around the doggie door to squeeze through to sneak out without tripping the alarm system.

 

[rockquarry]

Anyone keep their safe in the garage? Any drawbacks to doing so?