Hiding spots for firearms

Does anyone leave a cheap old gun out in plain sight as a "decoy", in the hopes that a burglar would grab it and go and not look for others?

J-Bar, my Dad had a broken handgun almost visible from the front door. It was there so my Mom, upon entrance, could determine if they had been burgled. If it was missing, her next task was to get out of the house and over to a neighbors.

Al Thompson - "J-Bar, my Dad had a broken handgun almost visible from the front door. It was there so my Mom, upon entrance, could determine if they had been burgled. If it was missing, her next task was to get out of the house and over to a neighbors."

What a great idea! Thanks for sharing..... Frankie

It amazes me how very few people look "up". I have had a firearm totally exposed in one location in my house, and in 10 years, only a handful of people have ever noticed it. I pointed it out to my wife one day and she was rather startled, the whole time we were dating she never saw it.

I have toyed with the idea of putting a fake or non working firearm in an obvious location under the thought that a thug, once believing they have the upper hand, will get overconfident and sloppy. But then I also consider that it might unnecessarily escalate a situation due to it as well. Kinda goes back to my most common thought that stuff is stuff, (which I will defend within reason) but if they pass up stuff and head to the bedroom door - then all bets are off.

J-Bar said:

Does anyone leave a cheap old gun out in plain sight as a "decoy", in the hopes that a burglar would grab it and go and not look for others?

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I think this accomplishes the exact opposite. Most houses are gun free, but those that have one gun tend to have many. It would seem to me that if a burglar found one firearm, it would encourage them to search for others.

This is exactly why I don't have NRA bumper stickers on my car, or those awful "protected by Smith & Wesson" lawn signs and window stickers. I don't want to advertise to anyone that there are firearms in my house, because it makes the house a valuable target.

The fact that almost 1 in 3 people in the U.S. have at least one firearm is all the encouragement any burglar would need to search diligently for one or more guns.

Mr. Thompson's parent's reasoning for the visual placement of a non-functional firearm is not meant to dissuade a further search for more, but to alert the homeowner that something is awry.

Last night when going to bed, it crossed my mind of uses for a hollow core door. A thought popped in my head of hollowing out the top of it and making a pocket. Door closed, no access. Door open and you get access to whatever fits in the top of it. Not good for short folks, but I don't know too many burglars tearing doors off hinges to look inside.

KMatch said:

Last night when going to bed, it crossed my mind of uses for a hollow core door. A thought popped in my head of hollowing out the top of it and making a pocket. Door closed, no access. Door open and you get access to whatever fits in the top of it. Not good for short folks, but I don't know too many burglars tearing doors off hinges to look inside.

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Interesting, how are you going to keep the weapon from rattling when the door is slammed? Or worse, dropping down the door out of reach? Plus you would be limited in selection to the Kahr PM9.

Any of my handguns would fit, rattling is simple, and keeping it from dropping down is simple as well. Just don't let the wife get POed and start slamming doors and all will be good.

don't know too many burglars tearing doors off hinges to look inside

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You'd be amazed at what they do. My parent's home was burglarized. Their house was 6,200 square feet. The burglars took all the books off the shelves and placed them on the floor. All drawers were taken out, emptied, and placed upside down on the floor. All mattresses and box springs were taken off the bed frames and placed upside down on the floors. All clothes in closets were removed and gone through.

My folks were on vacation at the time. My guess is that the burglars were somebody who had done work for them at some time. Specifically, one of my father's employees. That's the only way they could have known they had unlimited time to do the deed.

In my parent's case, the doors were all solid core. No help there.

Yep, Sunny, that's the typical burglar mentality and I hate to hear it happened. Your case is the "normal" routine. It's the higher end burglars that look for hidden safes, fake vents, and such. My thought on the door won't stop everybody, but it could stop a bunch who aren't pros. I even thought about it more and figured a solid core door would be even better! A bit of wood working and you can carve out an area to fit whatever you want in the top of it. Will it stop every one? Nope. You can have a gun stolen from your hip in a worst case scenario. The tricks I live by are 1, make your neighbor (the other guy) look more appealing than you. 2, make it as hard for the bad guys as you can, which reverts them back to 1. When we'd go jet skiing, my stuff was chained to the trailer then chained to a tree at the camp site. Steal proof? Nope. But as a thief, would you rather wrestle with MY stuff, or the campers next to me with the full trailer sitting next to the road ready to drop on a hitch? Always make the neighbor's stuff more inviting as you'll NEVER be thief proof.

J-Bar, my Dad had a broken handgun almost visible from the front door. It was there so my Mom, upon entrance, could determine if they had been burgled. If it was missing, her next task was to get out of the house and over to a neighbors.

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Perfect use for a Raven, Jennings, Davis, Bryco, Lorcin, Phoenix, Cobra, etc. Snip a bit off the firing pin and voila, decoy.

In my more tinfoil-hat moments I always thought that up inside the cavity of a wall hung cast iron sink would be a good place to hide a small revolver.

Last night when going to bed, it crossed my mind of uses for a hollow core door.

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Good place for hiding any number of things that are no wider that a door. You mentioning that reminded me of this I saw recently. They used a metal cigar tube and hid it in the top of a door.

CoRoMo said:

• On the front porch welcome-mat
• Down in the longer grass out back
• Resting on the rear bumper of the car
• In the toilet tank
• Tree branch through the trigger guard
• Up in the rain gutter
• Wired up under the wheel well of my truck
• Sneak it into the neighbor's fridge
• Hang it on the front door like a Christmas wreath
• Just keep it on the bench at the range
• Under my kid's pillow
• Shoved into the compost pile
• At the bottom of the bird bath
• Dangling from the chimney flue
• In the mop bucket at the local diner
• Baked in a lemon meringue pie
• Under the largest pumpkin in the garden
• Buried in a bucket of ice-melt salt

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I love lemon meringue pie. Would be the perfect present if a gun was in it.

For some reason I want to say in my best Gandolf voice "keep it secret, keep it safe!"

I have a pistol hidden inside a grandfather clock, in a small digital safe. The safe itself is pretty weak and wouldn't be too difficult to break into. I use it to keep out kids (I have a 3 year old), not crooks.

I don't know about hiding a gun in every room, but I do like the idea of having at least one for every floor of your house. The "clock gun" I have is on the first floor. I have a another pistol for the second story. If there was some kind of break in while I'm downstairs, I don't want to have to run upstairs to arm myself, and visa-versa

I'm with the, "I hide guns on me" crowd. Nothing else I'm realistically going to do is as fast as that or as secure as the gun safe.

Way back I had a Chevy S-10 Blazer that had a cup holder type thing in the console...discovered one day it snapped off, revealing a small compartment under it. Turns out a Beretta .25 950 fit perfectly in there...the .22 Beretta 21A I had wouldn't quite fit.

Bad idea:

in a desk drawer
near the bed or under the pillow or mattress
in a chest of drawers


Most people hide guns in the same easy-to-reach locations. I did, and when our house was broken into, all three of the pistols we had at the time were stolen. One was in the upper left desk drawer; they probably just reached in, grabbed it, and went to the next location. The pistol was laying on $200 in cash, which they didn't take; they probably just rooted in the most likely location and found a gun.

I was stupid, and it cost me three nice pistols. You can learn from my mistake for free.

Hiding firearms inside a house is more of a measure of when you aren't there, rather than, being caught in the home unarmed kind of situation. Your typical burglar will grab anything that is easy to see/find/get to and remove. This is why safes are heavy in addition to being harder to open without the combination. The weight adds a deterrent factor for MOST thieves. A determined or experienced team can easily rip apart a home and find many of the hiding spots or *slicks* for firearms and valuables. A friend of mine built a safe room into the foundation of his home using concrete and I-beams and a large steel door. He is well aware that a devoted team can get through it with enough time.