Just How Safe is YOUR Safe?

There is a difference between a safe, SLD, (safe looking device) an RSC (residential security container) and a cabinet.

Anchoring a safe is like taking the tags off a pair of shoes. . . it's what you do when you decide you're going to keep it.

And ANY safe is just a time-delay device. An RSC might buy 3 minutes, a TLTR 60x6 might buy a long weekend. . . but any idiot can open any safe given basic tools and time.

Most people do not know a "safe". They (including me) own a strong-box that masquerades as a safe.

Is this another one of those threads where everyone tells the guy who bought a big metal box to store guns has a flimsy piece of junk?

That's why I keep a rabid wolverine in my safe, SURPRISE!

Kevin Rohrer said:

Most people do not know a "safe". They (including me) own a strong-box that masquerades as a safe.

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Which, in many instances, will do just fine. I don't obsess about safe strength. I don't keep all my firearms locked up in one place. I don't show off my security to others. I don't live in a crappy neighborhood.

And as with any other typed of successful security, it's a matter of layers. Spread it around. Lock it up. Keep it secret. Keep it well hidden.

As to anchoring, I highly recommend it. It's an often ignored feature.

Thieves like that will only target you with the needed tools if they know you have a safe. So the best first countermeasure is stay low profile, don't advertise what you have at least locally. I see some people getting on social media like face book spreading their collection across their bed and showing it off. I don't think it is so much of a potential problem showing your stuff on a forum like this but ...

Alarm systems, dogs, and such are a good thing also. Also if you can keep a safe in a non visible area so if guests or repair people come over it isn't in plain sight.

Also at some point you should trust someone, like a long life friend or relative that is also low key not a jiber jaber that talks to everybody spilling any beans, you can trust them to house sit or at least check in while you are gone. Which brings another point, if you are going on vacation or out of town don't advertise it. The only time my friends and family see my vacation pics or know I was on vacation on face book is after I get back.

Most thieves target your place in daytime because they know most people are at work, so don't offer your work schedule to just anybody. And keep gun talk to a minimum at work, you may have co-workers who like shooting like you and you talk about it but word gets around and next thing you know the whole work place knows you like shooting and have guns. Then the person in the next dept is saying "hey I heard you have this and that" and they they tell more people.

Oh and another thing, if you have a safe in a garage cover it up otherwise people driving or walking by will see it.

I think technology in hand tools kinda undid the idea of a safe thats portable as a unit being a SAFE. Anchored or not anyone with a right angle grinder and some time has the combination. An alarm system such as that sold by SimplySafe is a far better deterrent and for a mere $24 a month monitored. My Browning Pro Steel just prevents smash and grab. My whole house is protected including water intrusion, low temperature and smoke. Cameras, can’t decide on their worth as a deterrent.

Obturation said:

That's why I keep a rabid wolverine in my safe, SURPRISE!

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What I want in my safe:

I have a safe that is leftover from when my children were young - my children did not know how to break into my safe and no regrettable childhood accidents. My safe is still a firearms storage unit, why not - it is cleverly designed for that purpose and does that job well. My safe is what it is, not perfect but better than zero. I do not get the constant drumbeat of safe flaws discussions, I don’t think that any safe owners are living in security LaLa Land - a safe does a decent job of safely storing a gun - always the critical element is just typing on the net on a blog because that is what we do now.

Anchoring a safe doe require some consideration as to just what the floor is under it.

Basements are often floored with what is known in the trade as a "rat slab." It's a 2-3" thick unreinforced surface resting atop the footers. The concrete is optimized to flow easily, and to not "intrude" much into the very limited headroom in a basement. What that often means is that it's only around 1500-1800 psi concrete. This is not an ideal substance to sink compression anchor ("wedge") bolts. And, those need to be only 2/3 penetration into the slab, too. The way the wedge bolts work often needs 1.75 to 2 inches of depth to work.

Slab-on-grade houses sometimes fare no better, with slabs as thin as 3.5" thick (unless over a slab beam).
Concrete is fickle, virtually all of its strength is in compression, not in tension (this is why we embed reinforcement, for tensile strength).

Now, if you drill in and have 6 or more inches of concrete at all the bolt locations, you are golden--set in the anchors and crank them down. If you don't, your best option is to get a concrete epoxy (like Hilti) and set in suitable all-thread.

Wooden floors are an entirely different animal, and takes individual assessment.

lionking said:

Oh and another thing, if you have a safe in a garage cover it up otherwise people driving or walking by will see it.

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Unless you keep the damn door closed. Like you should.

Nothing like teaching those who do not know how to do it... how to do it

Oh well, I guess they learn this in jail anyway... like they use a phone camera while walking down the street to see in they find IR cameras.

Get other security, video, alarm and dog.

An overlooked benefit to a safe is simply just having a spot to neatly store firearms. I've long outgrown mine so some guns don't get to reside in its cushy environs. During the Northridge quake, a few long guns which I had stored uncased in a coat closet got jostled around leaving a big ding on the stock of a shotgun I'd owned since I was a kid. Not too tragic, but once more, the ones in the safe were unmoved.

There's also legal reasons to own one both state and local for me.

As a group we can become paranoid to a point where moving guns to a vehicle for transport should be done under cover of darkness or at least as stealth as possible. I once had a friend, a life member of the NRA who refused to post the sticker on his cars, as I did mine, as it declared he was a gun owner.
My house, as I mentioned above is alarmed, and registered with the local police with a notice there are firearms in a safe on the premises.

I have concealment furniture

With the introduction of the hand held cold saw, no safe is safe anymore. You just have to keep criminals from getting to it.

Always bolt down the safes, best safe is the one they will never find.

The primary purpose of my "safes" are to keep my guns away from grand kids and my kids before that. They will make it harder for a thief. but that is secondary. I knew and accepted that when I bought them.

Nothings really safe when someone really wants to steal.

CapnMac said:

Anchoring a safe doe require some consideration as to just what the floor is under it.

Basements are often floored with what is known in the trade as a "rat slab." It's a 2-3" thick unreinforced surface resting atop the footers. The concrete is optimized to flow easily, and to not "intrude" much into the very limited headroom in a basement. What that often means is that it's only around 1500-1800 psi concrete. This is not an ideal substance to sink compression anchor ("wedge") bolts. And, those need to be only 2/3 penetration into the slab, too. The way the wedge bolts work often needs 1.75 to 2 inches of depth to work.

Slab-on-grade houses sometimes fare no better, with slabs as thin as 3.5" thick (unless over a slab beam).
Concrete is fickle, virtually all of its strength is in compression, not in tension (this is why we embed reinforcement, for tensile strength).

Now, if you drill in and have 6 or more inches of concrete at all the bolt locations, you are golden--set in the anchors and crank them down. If you don't, your best option is to get a concrete epoxy (like Hilti) and set in suitable all-thread.

Wooden floors are an entirely different animal, and takes individual assessment.

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This is all really good advice.

The key is where you buy your safe. Usually, not always but usually, a high volume gun store that sells high quality safes has crews that specialize in delivering and anchoring your safe based upon where you want it and the base you are anchoring-it-to.

When we expanded our home I had the slab poured in part of that expansion specifically to anchor my new 60 gun safe and then it was drilled and the anchors were epoxied ... all of this in our new Safe Room. "Safe" as in able to withstand tornados and hurricanes and a place for my wife to hide incase of a home invasion when I am not around ... complete with a hidden access door, etc. The whole shebang.

The guys at my local gun store have been delivering and anchoring at least a safe a day for some time now and they really know what they are doing. They loved tapping into my slab out there ... no spalling and they said it was good hard concrete (fiberglass mixed with rebar) that kicked their butts drilling. My brother in law is a professional concrete pumper and he did the pour and finish for free ... but the concrete is expensive.

There's a real cottage industry out there these days where safes are concerned ... and Safe Rooms and underground shelters, bulletproof walls, high security alarm and video systems, etc., and there are a lot of new home builders amd remodelers catering to those specific needs and wants. It is a sign of our times.

Safes are not the items we believe them to be, for instance we actively believe and compare our $500-$5000 dollar units to the only bench mark many people have experience with a traditional bank vault. This comparison is terrible flawed and when used as a standard of judgment will leave it's owner in quite a predicament on the so called day reckoning.

We as gun owners must take into consideration the short comings of commercial safes and creatively build around their inadequacies. Below will be a list of possible upgrades to a traditional gun safe, stack on security boxes, etc.

1. Accessibility, if you can get to it easily others can too. This means its within reach and most likely eyesight, kids have friends, husbands have drinking buddies, women have the book club and someone will eventually see it and the secret will be out.

2. Never stand alone, I have lived many places in homes I owned and have always made it a point to mount safes, stack on security boxes, tool crates, job boxes in corners the prevented the use of pry bars .

3. Mount it good, poor English used however you must do it. Mount the safe using the floor and two walls which is permissible when utilizing a corner location.

4. Realize you can't stop an attack on your home if its properly planned out. Battery operated tools and grinders make these feats even more possible and lessens the difficulty of even the most proactive safe mounting set up. It's not about stopping an attack against your home and valuable filled safe, its about delaying it to the point an perpetrator gives up and leaves.

Good luck and God speed is all you can say regarding all the days to come in our lives.

My safe is to deter casual thieves...anyone determined enough will get into anything I can afford. That’s not to say I won’t try to make it as hard as possible for them, but as others have said, it’s a delaying device at best.

Even if a gun safe is not perfect, any locked steel gun storage device is MUCH better than none. I don't have any misconceptions about whether someone could crack into mine. My shop has torches, ginders, sawzalls, and my plasma cutter within 50 feet of them, so you don't even need to bring tools with you. The real purpose is to keep curious kids and casual interlopers out for which they work wonderfully.

Like many others these dats, I do have a home alarm system which includes the doors to the shop and motion detection cameras (inside and outside) which send push notifications and have live video feed to my phone. * come to think about it, I could add sensors to.the safe doors... * plus the loud audible alarms hard wired in. The whole system was extremely reasonable and easy to install.

If I'm away and someone entered, it won't be long before the boys in blue arrive. I would honestly expect people to be more likely to steal tools than anything else.