If you’re a gun owner, your top priority should be making sure your firearms are never misused or fall into the wrong hands. To accomplish that, you must secure your firearms whenever you aren’t using them, and the absolute best way to do that is to use a gun safe.
To make your life a little easier, we’ve laid out some important things to consider when it comes to purchasing a gun safe for your home.
Gun Safes Come in Many Different Sizes
Start by thinking about the size of the safe. How many guns do you need to lock up? Do you want extra room for jewelry, cash, and other valuables? Several companies offer small lockboxes — sometimes called “vaults” — designed to fit just one handgun. As you can imagine, these are the most affordable and maneuverable options, costing as little as $25.
If you want to store multiple guns, you’re looking at a larger gun safe. Safe manufacturers typically provide physical dimensions for their products, estimates of how many guns they can store, and photos so that you can see what the safes look like fully loaded.
Where Will You Put the Safe?
The goal is to find a place that allows you easy access to the safe but isn’t obvious to thieves or children. A closet in your bedroom is a good starting point. In this location, if your home alarm system goes off in the middle of the night, or if you hear glass breaking, you can rush out of bed and into your closet to access your gun safe if needed.
If you have children, your safe needs to be as far away from their bedrooms and play areas as possible. That might be tough, especially if you live in an apartment, but the more obstacles between your kids and the gun safe, the better.
Garages typically have several strikes working against them: They’re relatively easy to break into; they often contain power tools that can be used to cut or drill into a safe; and they can be far away from your bedroom. Similarly, keeping a safe in your basement is only a good idea if you live where tornadoes are common and the guns are meant for hunting or recreational shooting, and you won’t need to access them quickly.
Some people prefer to position their single-pistol vaults in or around their nightstands, or perhaps under their beds, for faster access. But you don’t want a burglar to be able to grab the safe — or even the nightstand drawer you’ve tucked it in — and take off with it.
Anchoring the Safe
Choose a safe that can be securely anchored to the structure of your home, meaning the floor for most safes, but possibly the wall if it’s a smaller model. Pistol lockboxes and vaults may come with a cable that can be bolted to a wall or looped under heavy furniture.
No safe is impenetrable forever. But the idea is to keep the safe in place inside your home as long as possible. If a burglar can successfully flee with the safe in tow, they might have days or weeks to break into it and steal your firearms.
Never leave a safe “loose,” so to speak, or mount it to furniture that’s easy to move. Concrete floors are the best anchoring surfaces, but wooden floors will work, too. If you’d prefer to mount a smaller pistol vault to the wall, make sure that you bolt it directly to wall studs.
Selecting the Right Steel
Most gun safes are made of steel, but what type should you look for? Steel is measured in gauges. The lower the gauge number, the thicker the steel. For larger safes or those designed to hold more than one gun, look for a minimum of 10-gauge steel for the body and a heavier, thicker door because it will be the primary target. Single-pistol lockboxes and vaults will be in the 14- to 16-gauge steel range. Anything higher, such as 20-gauge steel, is just too thin and easy to pierce.
How that steel is formed and assembled is just as important as its thickness. You want a gun safe or pistol vault that is “pry resistant,” meaning the edges won’t provide a foothold for a crowbar, for example. Safes should also be fully welded, not bolted or spot-welded together, to minimize weak points.
The Locking Mechanism
There are a few different locking mechanisms on the market, and most safes today have redundant opening mechanisms, so if one fails, you’ll have other avenues for opening the safe.
- Mechanical locks include those that open with a key, a pin, or a dial. These are considered a bit old school, but they’re also known for their reliability and longevity. You don’t have to worry about any electronic components failing or a battery dying. You have a few things to consider with mechanical locks, however. For example, you might have trouble seeing the keyhole or dial if you ever need to open the safe in the dark. And where will you keep the key? Will you have it on you in an emergency, or should you stick to a simple dial?
- Keypad locks are electronic locking mechanisms that use combinations. They’re typically a little faster to open than mechanical locks, and most models allow you to program (and reprogram) a few different combinations. The best keypad-equipped safes have backlit numbers so you can see them in the dark, and they will also lock someone out for a set amount of time if they repeatedly enter the wrong code. With this style, look for a safe that has a mechanical backup option, such as a key, in case the keypad fails.
- Biometric locks are designed to open after scanning a registered fingerprint, and they can be incredibly quick to open in an emergency. The best biometric gun safes also allow you to program multiple fingerprints for a few different users as well. You’ll also want a backup method for opening the safe, such as a key or keypad. Pay attention to the battery life, too. The manufacturer should be able to tell you how long the batteries will last before you need to replace them.
- RFID locks open using items like key fobs, watch bands, or decals encoded with a specific radio frequency. These safes are the fastest to open, but only if you have the RFID-tagged item nearby — but not so close that it’s easy for someone else to find — or on your person. As with the other electronic safes in this list, you need to consider the safe’s battery life, and look for a model that has backup mechanisms, like a keypad, in case you can’t find an RFID-tagged item or the sensor fails.
If you’re ever locked out of a safe, regardless of its locking mechanism, a locksmith should be able to help you regain access. You can also check with your safe’s manufacturer to see if a technician is available to help.
Additional Features
Gun safes are usually marketed with fire protection ratings, or estimates of how long a safe can protect its contents from extremely high temperatures over a given duration. To keep things as simple as possible, look for a safe that can withstand heat of at least 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit on the outside — while keeping the interior at or below 350 degrees — for at least 30 minutes. If the inside gets hotter than 350 degrees, your guns and valuables might be damaged beyond repair.
The best safes come with an interior lining so to prevent scratches on your firearms, an interior light that turns on automatically when the safe door is opened, waterproofing in case you live in an area prone to flooding, and a dehumidifier.
Pistol lockboxes and vaults can be had for as low as $25, and larger, high-end safes can cost several thousand dollars. Obviously, find the price that works within your budget, but remember: You’re paying for peace of mind.