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Not actually Erin. & is used with permission. |
Once you become a gun owner it is your moral (and in some states, legal) responsibility to store your firearms securely in order to keep curious children from finding them and to prevent thieves from stealing them. While firearm safes are expensive (costing at least $1,000) and heavy (weighing several hundred pounds), there are other options available to the budget-conscious prepper.
Before we begin, however, an important note: any safe can be defeated given proper conditions. A small safe can be stolen and disassembled at leisure; a determined thief with plenty of time and the proper tools can cut or drill into larger safes. Therefore, in my opinion gun storage solutions should have the following qualities:
- Affordability. It is better to have a cheap safe than no safe at all.
- Deterrence. Most home thefts are quick in-and-out jobs, with the thieves not wanting to risk being caught by homeowners or police. Anything which is not easily taken or defeated in a few minutes will suffice in this regard, and anything which deters a thief will prevent a child from gaining entry.
- Accessibility. If I hear a bump in the night, I need to be able to get to my home defense firearm quickly and reliably.
- Storage. Since we are storing firearms, it is better to get a safe which stores more of them.
You will note that I didn't mention protection against fire. While I'm sure some of you will disagree, I feel that fire rating is more hype than substance. Sure, the flames may not penetrate, but how hot will the interior get? House fires burn at over 1,000 degrees F, which is more than hot enough to melt polymer frames and ruin the tempers of metals. Fire resistance also adds to the cost (and weight) of safes, which runs counter to the principle of quality #1.
To that end, I recommend the concept of the security cabinet to budget-minded preppers: a lockable steel enclosure that is a safe in all but the most stringent definitions, and is more affordable because they can be delivered to you unassembled. This has the valuable side benefit of being able disassemble your cabinet and take it with you when you move, rather than force you to leave it behind or pay a moving company an outrageous fee to ship it.
The following are the three security cabinets which I own and recommend.
I bought this from Amazon for $90 back in 2017 and it has served me well in that time. While you could store 8 long guns in it, doing so would make them difficult to take out quickly, and rifles with optics will further complicate that procedure. It is far more suitable for storage of 4 long guns, perhaps 6 if you aren't in a hurry to get two of them.
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| https://stack-on.com/product/8-gun-security-cabinet-ready-to-assemble |
I have further upgraded this with the SecureIt Retrofit 2 kit, which allows me to store my optics-using firearms along the back of the cabinet rather than along the sides.
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| https://amzn.to/3Vqykrb |
This allows me to have my bump-in-the-night guns (a 12 gauge shotgun and a pistol caliber carbine) easily accessible at a moment's notice, with the shelf used to hold ammunition and electronic hearing protection earmuffs. The door is kept unlocked with the keys in the door when I am home, and the cabinet is by my bed. When I leave the house, the cabinet is locked and my keyring comes with me.
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| https://stack-on.com/product/compact-pistol-ammo-cabinet#specs |
I use this safe to hold the pistols I want to access quickly, as well as additional ammunition. I keep it locked, with one key inside the security cabinet and the other in my Hiram, below.
This is a new addition which I acquired after Christmas as part of moving into my father's old bedroom. It cost $200 with $50 shipping (ugh), but it's much larger and more secure than my Stack-On 8 Gun. While this probably doesn't fit the stringent definition of a "safe", the panels are thicker and the locks more durable, so it's likely to be the closest to an actual safe that I'll ever get.
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| https://amzn.to/452TGxX |
What I like about this safe, in addition to being wide enough to accommodate 6 long guns (with optics) across the back and tall enough to store my Mosin-Nagant, is that its louvred back panel is compatible with the aforementioned SecureIt accessories. It can also be unlocked with biometrics, a keypad code, or a concealed key lock. It's also worth noting that both the Stack-On 8 Gun and the Hiram come with the ability to be bolted to walls and/or floors for extra security.
I use this safe to store the rifles I don't need in a hurry, and when I go out of town I'll put the guns in the Stack-On in there for extra security. I put my spare keys to the Stack-Ons in here, hanging on a spare peg.
While none of these cabinets are "proper" safes, I was able to securely store my firearms against theft and damage for $400, which is less than the price of a new handgun and much, much less than the cost of a $1,000+ safe.
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