Pick a Safe safe???

How much is it going to have the safe delivered?
Does it have to go up or down stairs, or around sharp corners?
Will the floor support the weight?

Is it more reasonable just to buy a cheap safe and upgrade your homeowner's or renter's insurance?

You get what you pay for and gun safes are no exception.
Lot's of videos and reviews comparing Liberty and other quality safes to cheap ones.
Quality gun safes are in fact safes. Cheap ones are just locking cabinets.

Depends a lot on how much money you are willing to spend to protect what is inside your safe.

My comments really apply to anything you lock up, not just guns.

I don't see that it is worth spending $2000 on a safe to protect $1000 worth of stuff.

Fire is a big problem and a lot of safes are not especially fire resistant. There are all kinds of issues with fire, including a building falling down on your safe. Just figuring out where it is best to locate a safe to make it as safe from fire as possible is an issue that is not always real obvious.

You have to decide if you are more worried about smash and grab or keeping things away from kids, or whether you want real security.

There is also the problem of the universal combination. If someone wants into your safe, all he really has to do is point a gun at your knee cap and give you a choice between what is in your safe and your knee cap.

Personally, I think a home alarm system is maybe worth as much as a really good safe. Buy a lesser safe and get an alarm system might be an option.

If you have kids and they know about your safe (and they do), they will tell other people. Some of those people are going to tell others and pretty soon someone unsavory is going to know you have a safe. That suggests you have something worth protecting.

Many safes are really just sheet metal and can be opened with a pry bar or even just a big screw driver.

A friend of mine owned a coin store. He had a real safe bolted to the floor. Weighed several thousand pounds. One night someone came by with a tow truck, backed through a wall of his store and hooked up to the safe and dragged it off. Took about 30 seconds according to the video.

theboyscout said:

single floor yes it will support the waifht

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Actually, that's not always an assert-able assumption.

Buddy of mine was rather proud of his Armscor that was bolted to the slab in his attached garage.

That is until a 4x4 pickup was backed into it (complicated story of daughters and teenaged bf).

Tract builder slab was barely 3" thick, and only reinforced with rusty woven wire mesh (which, naturally, was on the bottom of the slab where it always winds up). Two of the 3/4" compression bolts had actually broken the slab, so the safe had two corners really just floating on 1-1.5" of busted concrete on an indifferent sand base.

Got rent a rotary hammer (skip a hammer drill rental unless you want to buy the thing) and make a test hole to see just how thick the slab actually is. How quickly a drift will go through your slab chucked in the rotary hammer will also tell you about the quality of the concrete (not all concrete is equal).

That's 2¢ from somebody who has been building things for more than 39 years. Apply grains of salt as you wish.

theboyscout wrote:
Looking into a new gun safe and want to know what is worth while.

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What are you expecting the safe to do?

Nobody can give you an opinion as to what is "best" for your particular situation unless you tell us what you expect the safe to do, where you are going to put it and how much you have to spend.

In my case, I recently bought a $100 Stack-On safe. But, I wasn't looking to it to keep criminals out of my guns, just keep children and other curious (but not criminal) people from handling the guns. And for that, it is perfectly adequate. If you are looking to keep determined criminals away from your guns, protect them in the event of a fire and you have a robust structure to support it and lots of money to spend, then you have lots of choices.

How much you want to spend? How big does it have to be?
Most big manufacturers build different " levels" so a higher level from one brand isn't going to offer the same security as a lower level from different maker.
Also where are you located? Is there local manufacturer---you'll save on shipping as well as possibly getting some custom touches if you buy locally.
Both Sturdy and Kodiak are built in my town.
Also, some companies have models made both here in the USA and elsewhere (China) If you don't know which models are built where, well, you won't know until you see a tag identifying the country of origin.
Then there are the locking mechanisms. Most are electronic-----I spent a little more for a dial. Which do you feel more comfortable with?

Purchasing a gun safe is complicated business and when I bought my safe 30 years ago there was even less info available to mull over than there is today.
Even so, I was utterly confused.
So I went to a National Forest ranger station and asked the ranger what make and model gun safe they were supplied with, then I bought the same one figuring that if it's good enough for the rangers to secure weapons at an often unmanned office, it's good enough for my needs (and I lag bolted that sucker down good and tight!)

TRX wrote:
Is it more reasonable just to buy a cheap safe and upgrade your homeowner's or renter's insurance?

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Good point.

I don't have a separate rider on my homeowner's insurance to cover my guns, but I do have a rider covering my server farm ($3,000 limit) that costs me about $9 a year. I figure a firearms rider would be similar, particularly if you were keeping them in a safe (which I can't do with a server farm).

Study Safe.

AMSEC or Sturdy would be my choices.

My vote is for whatever budget box RSC you like the looks and price of to keep the kids and smash and grabbers away from your guns, plus a good firearms insurance policy to protect you from dedicated theives.

Location is useful.
If you've got a safe with a substantial lock & door, the vulnerable points will be the top, back, and side walls. Installing your safe in a corner will limit exposure and installing inside a closet will limit exposure even more, plus putting extra sheet rock between the safe and closet walls should the boost fire rating and having it in a closet would keep it out of the sight of visitors or workmen who may be casing your home out.
In the garage, not so much.
If the safe is observable from the street when the garage door is open---no.
If you keep power tools that can used to open your safe in the same garage as your safe---no.
If you safe is accessible to a truck and chain for a "yank and dash"---no!

No safe is 100% but increasing the time and effort it takes to defeat that safe will add to the security it can provide you
My 2-cents anyway.

Go with American Security (AMSCE) BF series or Sturdy safes. These safes (RSC) are both competitively priced and are much better than big box RSC's. I like Sturdy for their thick steel construction but the AMSEC for their fire protection and nicer interiors.

I don't worry about smash and grab.

The fire rating and weight of a safe are a couple good indicators of quality.

If time is on your side, keep an eye on craigslist for the safe you want. There are a lot of retiring baby boomers that have a large commercial safe in the back of their business that used to contain the payroll and other valuables that has not been used in years. You can buy an old TL-30 jewelers safe with a dial combo for dirt. They don't build them like they used to, and those old safes will last forever - indeed they have.

The downside is that you will need to hire a safe moving/trucking company to move it - but this is not difficult with a few calls.

Choice is based on several things including location, circumstances and budget.

I decided that if I were to get a $700 or so 12 GA or so "peel and steal" RSC with thin walls I would just be throwing additional money out the window. I went for the extra bit and bought a Sturdy brand safe with the 4 GA walls, 3/8" door and fire lining.

The lower cost safes' doors look massive, but are shells filled with some sort of fire lining. Knock on them. The plate steel on the door of the Safety brand safe is thicker than the total amount of steel in other RSCs and the back frame is massive--3 or 4 inch channels of 3/16" steel.

Wrapped with cabinets that are bolted to the wall and a car in front, structure behind to discourage chains and ropes.

The beefy Sturdy safes are just short of meeting the definition of true safe, but are a cost effective transition between RSC and true safe.

My Fort Knox is a great safe.

My recommendation is to get a proper safe, not a locking cabinet. I won't say that one safe is as good as another. Your specific choice would depend on what threats you are looking to protect against, ie theft, fire, removal, ect and what features you want, ie dial vs keypad vs biometric ect. I had a stack on security cabinet, I think I spent about $120 on it. It was torn off the wall and breached with nothing more than a 12" screwdriver. Not completely opened, mind you, but enough for the thieves to remove two handguns. I now have a liberty...that beast isn't going anywhere. I purchased mine in SW Florida at Lowe's, for a decent price. Remember, a gun store is not the only place to get a gun safe.

As bad as a theft can be, keep in mind a flooded basement is no fun to come home to either. I spent some time a few summers ago digging up a foundation wall for my parents that had cracked between the block and allowed several inches of water in. Guess who's safe was secured directly to the floor...

As luck would have it they dried out fine, but these weren't rare or collectible arms which could have been a very different story.

Yep, and I have a separate rider for a flooded basement, too.... Lol

Sturdy Safe. I've stopped worrying when I'm gone.

I voted for "other" because Fort Knox wasn't in your list. Have you seen this you tube vid?

I don't know about the best safe buy but I have small grand kids in and out of my home all the time.So I bought two Field & Stream safe. I hear people knocking them all the time,but I say if man made it,man will figure out how to break into it. Had to get that in before all the negative comments start coming about Field & Stream safes! Lol have at it y'all!