My biggest issue with safes is I also own the tools to defeat them even though they are locked up in a shed. At least the bastards will have to work a bit. I can only hope to discourage the casual or opportunistic thief with the level of security a safe provides. 

Mike

Ben said
The money for 2 safes can usually cover the cost of a modest vault door… downstairs, corner bedroom… reinforce the two exposed walls on the inside of the room, cover with sheetrock…reinforce the door frame… add the vault door.  It might not be the perfect solution, but better than two safes… plus, add a comfortable chair or two, a shelf with your library, maybe small flat screen & wallah! the perfect hide out from honey-do’s!

  

I’d like to have a gun room but in current home would have to give up windows and reinforcing the walls would be tricky. I toyed with building a barndo before they became trendy and one room was reinforced. Come to think of it, those windows were blown out by the tornado. They might go away.

Mike

Having made the professional acquaintance of several fairly accomplished burglars (only “fairly” because they required my services), I’m told the two factors of concern are (1) difficulty of access and (2) time. 

A quality safe bolted to the foundation, paired with a monitored security system, is a good practical solution to defeat your average thug or, better, to discourage him from trying.  Better, safer pickings elsewhere. 

Nothing is completely safe from the most experienced safecrackers with the adjunct skills to defeat alarms, but those rare and very careful people won’t risk lengthy incarceration or bodily injury for mere collectibles, particularly firearms, the taking of which violates federal criminal law with its harsher penalties, absence of probation and good time, and invites the attention of FBI and BATFE. 

Armed robbery is a different problem altogether.  I think lavish home displays viewable by strangers are a risk for this, because those so inclined are usually notable for their lack of impulse control.

A pair of extremely suspicious Dobermans free to roam the house can almost completely eliminate the risk of robbery. However, as much as i admire Dobes,  from my years in practice I think they are themselves living lawsuits.  Dismembering your yardman or a cookie-selling Cub Scout will result in a damages judgement far exceeding the combined amounts of your homeowners liability coverage plus the value of your collection. 

None of the safes I can afford have a Lloyd’s fire rating because the necessary enhanced protections and testing take the price up to unaffordable for all but dope dealers and Arab sheiks.  

Nonetheless, the better brands of gun safes with fire retardant insulation can keep the atmosphere of the safe smoke free and below a temperature that would cosmetically affect a gun — for enough time to allow firefighters to suppress a house fire in its early stages. That’s a lot of house fires, particularly those houses protected by monitored security systems that make the call early.  In those cases most of the damage is from smoke, not heat.

 If you live in a very dry climate and so don’t bother to use a goldenrod,  when changing to a fire retarding safe you need to consider how the airtight atmosphere can trap humidity and plan to monitor and control it. 

clarence said

Nevada Paul said And the safes have the added protection of fire, which a vault door in a framed house does not fully. 

That protection is limited, unless there’s a fire station on your block.  In a major fire, the safe may preserve the baked remains, but their collector value has gone up in smoke.  Those terrible photos shown on TV news over the last few days of the wildfires in NM & CA always make me wonder what guns & other antiques have been lost.

  

Depending on the fire intensity and duration, you have to cross your fingers and hope for the best.  When that fire builds pressure, smoke gets into places you couldnt begin to imagine–and the added heat. Then within a short period of time the corrosion sets in.  The damage caused by smoke alone is bad enough and I dont think you can trust some of the best safes out there to protect from the all fire/smoke conditions. 

1892takedown said

clarence said

Nevada Paul said And the safes have the added protection of fire, which a vault door in a framed house does not fully. 

That protection is limited, unless there’s a fire station on your block.  In a major fire, the safe may preserve the baked remains, but their collector value has gone up in smoke.  Those terrible photos shown on TV news over the last few days of the wildfires in NM & CA always make me wonder what guns & other antiques have been lost.

  

Depending on the fire intensity and duration, you have to cross your fingers and hope for the best.  When that fire builds pressure, smoke gets into places you couldnt begin to imagine–and the added heat. Then within a short period of time the corrosion sets in.  The damage caused by smoke alone is bad enough and I dont think you can trust some of the best safes out there to protect from the all fire/smoke conditions. 

  

That is absolutely true – time and intensity are the controlling factors in fire damage and none of the gun safes are an absolute protection.  The only practical solution is to buy a good brand of safe with what fire protection is available, and maintain a monitored alarm system.  The large majority of “saves” by alarm systems are fire calls, not intrusion calls.  It varies with the locale, of course, but we’ve been had a couple of false fire alarm calls – one due to broiling steaks on the kitchen stovetop where the exhaust fan just couldn’t keep up; the other was a failing sensor that cried wolf.  In both instances, our FD boys were at the door in less than 4 minutes.  With a proper spread of heat and smoke detectors, that response time can really limit the damage – most of which is going to be smoke damage, the severity of which I do not discount.  As in the case of burglary, I think limiting time on target helps more than anything else. 

When looking for a safe don’t get hung up with the details and fancy features, especially how thick the door is and how many or how big the bolts are.  The easiest way to get into a safe is through the sides or rear.   Mine is in a corner and is bolted to the concrete floor. It weighs 1100 lbs empty. I have a monitored alarm system and one of the motion detectors is aimed at the safe. My family knows not to talk about my guns.  The safe is located where normal entrance to my house does not allow the safe to be seen.  Same for displays.  You need to have a discussion about the lock before you pick the type you need.  I didn’t say want.  The number 1 problem with a safe is failure of the digital locks.  If the door is open when it fails you are OK.  But if the door is closed it will be a costly job to get the safe open and then the repairs of the various holes that will have to be drilled, rewelded and painted.  When I bought my first safe I was shown a safe that was going through the repair after the lock failed. No cheap fix.  If you can keep your safe behind closed doors so nobody will ever see them.

That’s the downside to country living. My son lives on a mountain where there’s no water lines. The house has a fire suppression sprinkler system but that’s just to give time to get out of the house.  

Out of sight out of mind is a vety sound idea. Hard to steal what you don’t see.

The odd (and sometimes unplanned) occasion of workman coming into the house is a real risk.  These guys talk.  They talk to each other, their friends, family, at bars and then those people talk.  Anything they see of interest in their non-interesting day will spark conversation.  Maybe just one average size safe isn’t that remarkable and they see them often enough.  But a particularly large or fancy safe or multiple safes… that becomes mentionable.

We know a of guns are stolen by youth and various non-professional criminals.  Safes work very well to deter these type thieves.  However having said that, I know a lot of guns who have one or more safes and it just the way things go, they end up not being able to fit all of their guns in the safe(s).  It’s often on their want list to purchase a safe.  

But then there is the professional criminal out there.  This is the crew that knows how quickly and easy it is to cut through the sidewall of a safe.  I had a friend (now deceased) who was a counselor who treated many of these guys over the course of a very long career.  He learned a lot spending hours with people he would have never normally interacted with.  It was quite the education for him.  

A theme among the “professional” criminals he treated was their perspective that breaking into someone’s home (when they are not home) is easy.  It’s easy to figure out when people are gone, on vacation and the like.  They said the hard part was knowing who had what you wanted to steal.

If you think about it, you can drive down any street.  You can’t tell by looking at the houses who has five safes with 200 guns and who had just a shotgun in a closet.  The most expensive houses on the street may have nothing and the more modest house is where the gold mine is.  Actually, a lot of guys who have accumulated a large collection have a more modest house as they have spent their money on their collection and not a house.

For the criminal, finding that person with the collection is the challenge.  The main method is word of mouth.  Getting back to the workman, my friend said a common method employed by the, “professional” was to sit in bars that were frequented by workman and simply sit on the edge of conversations and listen to the guys talk about what they had seen recently.  Locations were often revealed.  It’s only natural that when someone mentioned he saw five gun safes in a house, someone will ask, “what house was that in?”  

It was mentioned in a comment above and I know many have trained their families to not talk about guns in the home.  This is tougher – say you have teenagers in the home and they have friends over.  The better the safe is completely out of sight, the better.

I have known collectors who receive various gun magazines and publications and are careful to use an address other than their home address.  Even your postman can have loose lips.  

When I think of the criminal sitting in a bar listening, I suppose that is just an earlier, primitive version of what is now known as  computer “data mining.”