If you search Google for "types of Burglars," you'll get any number of examples. For our purposes, there are two; The opportunistic/random burglar who relies on pot luck to find something of value upon breaking into your home, and the
"targeted burglar," the one who knows you have a safe and or guns and has targeted your stuff.
Here are a few suggestions to help keep you from losing your guns to a burglar. First, the small lock boxes that bolt to the floor, a wall or inside a piece of furniture are only intended to secure your guns from others who are otherwise welcome in your house such as guests, inlaws, children and their friends, repair men, even your daughter's boyfriend with the green and blue hair. These boxes are easily pried off whatever they're bolted to. I'll even destroy your dresser or take the entire drawer its bolted to.
2. If you're handy or work in construction, don't provide the tools a burglar may need upon discovering your safe or lock box. Figure out what tools you own and that a burglar would likely resort to, then keep them out of sight and under lock and key. This is especially so if the easiest way to break in to your home is through the garage.
3. While some gun safes are works of art and meant to be displayed, I don't. My gun safe is out of sight.
4. The gun is the last line of defense, not the first. Follow the standard advice of not letting newspapers and mail accumulate, don't hide windows with shrubbery etc. Consider installing a home security system.
5. Loose lips sink more than ships. You'll experience that sinking feeling upon discovering that your safe has either been broken into or carried off by burglars. Don't be so damned trusting with casual acquaintances. Selling a gun to a stranger? Don't take him to the safe.
6. Never leave guns in the master bedroom when you're not home. Leave an empty lockbox in the master bedroom as a decoy.
7. Buy a heavy safe and bolt it in place. Consider adding a few hundred pounds of divers' weights to further increase its weight. A safe located in a basement is infinitely harder to remove than one in the garage or main floor. If you and your two buddies can easily move the safe, then it ain't heavy enough.
8. If you must locate a safe in the garage, build a false cabinet around it. The safe must not be visible from the street, especially when you open it.
9. Keep your home locked at all times. I won't have to wrestle with your safe if I ring your bell, pretend to be someone I'm not, then force you open to the safe. A home invader is not a burglar.
10.Basement windows are easily penetrated and you should consider installing locking burglar bars across them if permitted by your local fire codes. But, always leave yourself a way out in the event of fire.
11. If possible. locate safes away from utilities so that a serviceman called to repair something, does not learn of your safe.
12. A good safe is easily the price of two or three handguns at retail. Those $129.00 safes available at the "Megga Depot Club" will keep out a snoopy houseguest but not the targeted burglar.
13. Doing home renovations? Be especially wary of building contractors and their hired hands, some of whom may be undocumented day laborers. A wealthy acquaintance and client of my son trusted his keys to home improvement contractors. Somehow, they discovered his sturdy safe in an upstairs bedroom. When they struck a few weeks later, they knew to take the security recording equipment from the basement, then, they destroyed the floor to free the safe, allowed it to fall down a flight of stairs, doing several thousand dollars in structural damage and hauled it off with a pickup truck, judging by the tandem wheel tracks left at his front entrance. Here's a targeted burglary at its finest and the crime remains unsolved.
These are perhaps the most obvious things to do and not do. I'm sure that fellow forum members can add to it, even share their own experience. A poster here in the S&W forum recently lost a lock box containing two handguns to a burglar and discovered that the burglar had used HIS sledge hammer to break it free.
"targeted burglar," the one who knows you have a safe and or guns and has targeted your stuff.
Here are a few suggestions to help keep you from losing your guns to a burglar. First, the small lock boxes that bolt to the floor, a wall or inside a piece of furniture are only intended to secure your guns from others who are otherwise welcome in your house such as guests, inlaws, children and their friends, repair men, even your daughter's boyfriend with the green and blue hair. These boxes are easily pried off whatever they're bolted to. I'll even destroy your dresser or take the entire drawer its bolted to.
2. If you're handy or work in construction, don't provide the tools a burglar may need upon discovering your safe or lock box. Figure out what tools you own and that a burglar would likely resort to, then keep them out of sight and under lock and key. This is especially so if the easiest way to break in to your home is through the garage.
3. While some gun safes are works of art and meant to be displayed, I don't. My gun safe is out of sight.
4. The gun is the last line of defense, not the first. Follow the standard advice of not letting newspapers and mail accumulate, don't hide windows with shrubbery etc. Consider installing a home security system.
5. Loose lips sink more than ships. You'll experience that sinking feeling upon discovering that your safe has either been broken into or carried off by burglars. Don't be so damned trusting with casual acquaintances. Selling a gun to a stranger? Don't take him to the safe.
6. Never leave guns in the master bedroom when you're not home. Leave an empty lockbox in the master bedroom as a decoy.
7. Buy a heavy safe and bolt it in place. Consider adding a few hundred pounds of divers' weights to further increase its weight. A safe located in a basement is infinitely harder to remove than one in the garage or main floor. If you and your two buddies can easily move the safe, then it ain't heavy enough.
8. If you must locate a safe in the garage, build a false cabinet around it. The safe must not be visible from the street, especially when you open it.
9. Keep your home locked at all times. I won't have to wrestle with your safe if I ring your bell, pretend to be someone I'm not, then force you open to the safe. A home invader is not a burglar.
10.Basement windows are easily penetrated and you should consider installing locking burglar bars across them if permitted by your local fire codes. But, always leave yourself a way out in the event of fire.
11. If possible. locate safes away from utilities so that a serviceman called to repair something, does not learn of your safe.
12. A good safe is easily the price of two or three handguns at retail. Those $129.00 safes available at the "Megga Depot Club" will keep out a snoopy houseguest but not the targeted burglar.
13. Doing home renovations? Be especially wary of building contractors and their hired hands, some of whom may be undocumented day laborers. A wealthy acquaintance and client of my son trusted his keys to home improvement contractors. Somehow, they discovered his sturdy safe in an upstairs bedroom. When they struck a few weeks later, they knew to take the security recording equipment from the basement, then, they destroyed the floor to free the safe, allowed it to fall down a flight of stairs, doing several thousand dollars in structural damage and hauled it off with a pickup truck, judging by the tandem wheel tracks left at his front entrance. Here's a targeted burglary at its finest and the crime remains unsolved.
These are perhaps the most obvious things to do and not do. I'm sure that fellow forum members can add to it, even share their own experience. A poster here in the S&W forum recently lost a lock box containing two handguns to a burglar and discovered that the burglar had used HIS sledge hammer to break it free.
