Decoy Guns?

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JellyJar

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For 13 of the 26 years I lived in Texas I was the assistant manager of a family owned furniture store in Houston. One of our perennial favorites were gun cabinets. They were very flimsy affairs not made of solid wood with thin window glass on them. Although they had locks on them those locks would only stop the smallest of children and sometimes not even them! :what:

We sold quite a bit of them and I wondered why given how poorly made they were. Well the guy who did out delivery for us mentioned that he had such a gun case and it was filled with broken non-working guns that he had bought for five dollars or less. He was using them as decoys! :confused:

His theory was that most burglars would not be able to tell good guns from bad ones and should his house be burgled the stupid crooks would take these cheap non-working guns and not bother looking for his good one. :)

Anybody else do this or heard of this?

Also, I once met a man who told me he installed a gutted out water heater in his garage, complete with phony pipes, and stored his guns in it.

Without telling too much can anyone tell of other clever ways to hide your guns from criminals and do any of you use decoy guns?
 
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Also, I once met a man who told me he installed a gutted out water heater in his garage, complete with phony pipes, and stored his guns in it.
Click to expand...
If there's a buck to be made, they'll take about anything.
We've had aluminum ground bar pulled out of the ground.
One even tried to unbolt 4160 live copper!

Out of sight and locked up as tight as possible is far better IMO.
 
Have done the decoy thing myself. Know folks who have built large cavities into a closet wall to allow a sliding panel hidden storage. Know a couple of others who have false walls in their basements with their gun rooms hidden in there. Have seen false bottoms made on beds, under couches, deeper cabinets, etc. Knew a guy who built a solid plate gun cabinet. The door was a fake. Opened from the side, said that if anyone found it they would waste time trying to pry open the fake door. Seen some pretty inventive ideas.
 
I have always thought that if a burglar knows where you hide valuables, he'll get them. I'll bet that some burglars come back weeks/months later after seeing a safe during their 1st trip. The 2nd time, they bring tools like huge pry bars, powerful drills, expensive drill bits, etc.

However, if the valuables are hidden from view (OR - "hidden in plain sight", aka : fake water heater), the thieves won't come back 'cause they'll think they either got all they could get OR there wasn't anything of value left.

Some companies specialize in building hidden rooms and safe rooms. That's an expensive way to go but it's almost totally safe - & really cool. It probably isn't much more expensive than a top-notch safe and many times it can double as a tornado shelter.
 
I'd need a saw because no long guns would fit in the old fridge and old freezer in my basement as they are now.

I'm not saying that you, or anyone would need to, but I most certainly would.
 
I used to use an old glass front gun cabinet as my decoy unit. Kept a couple of old air rifles, a single shot shotgun, two inexpensive .22 rifles, and a one or two airsoft pistols in there. Everything else was locked up in two other safes that were in the basement and well out of sight.
 
I hame a few bait guns that are not functional, or worth too much, stashed as if I am really trying to hide them. My hope is that the bad guys grab them and go, missing the real stuff. It could lead to more snooping, but with the alarm going off and the dog doing his thing I doubt they will hang around too long.
 
I use a different decoy....

I've been saving my small change for well over a decade now, dropping whatever is in my pocket at the end of the day in glass jars and vases. There's now about a dozen large, heavy, and visually-appealing theft items in plain sight. I figure some burglus will spend a bunch of time trying to fumble around with those, delaying and distracting them while the alarms keep going off. To get to most of them, they'll need to get a ladder from the garage, and so on...

I figure some kid running down the street with 60-70 pounds of coins in his arms, in fragile glass containers, would stand out to the responding police.

- - - Yoda
 
Why bother with a saw? Most modern units have a lock. It looks like a big freezer...but isn't.
Click to expand...

You can actually buy chest freezers w/ locks fairly cheap.
 
JellyJar said:
For 13 of the 26 years I lived in Texas I was the assistant manager of a family owned furniture store in Houston. One of our perennial favorites were gun cabinets. They were very flimsy affairs not made of solid wood with thin window glass on them. Although they had locks on them those locks would only stop the smallest of children and sometimes not even them! :what:

We sold quite a bit of them and I wondered why given how poorly made they were.
Click to expand...


Gun Cabinets as you described are from a bygone era. They come from a time when folks were proud to openly display their guns and the only protection they needed for them was from dust.....they were one step up from the widely used "gun racks" of the time. They were used in the time when folks didn't lock their doors anyway and they wanted everyone that came into their home to see the quantity and quality of the guns they owned. They didn't fear their neighbors and home invasion was something that happened only on the bad side of town.......and folks on the bad side of town kept it there. This was the time when children didn't need to be protected from guns, because they knew all about them....how they worked and the damage they did when the trigger was pulled. Having guns enclosed and stored with a dehumidifier or desiccants was unheard of cause folks regularly used all their guns and kept them clean and well oiled. Even when they didn't, a little "surface rust" never hurt the function of gramp's ol' 30-30, nor did it affect it's value to him.

My how times have changed. Used to be you couldn't walk into a furniture store and not see a whole wall of them on display. Now you'd be hard pressed to find any furniture store that has even one in stock. Kinda like 8-track tape players.
 
Cheap decoys on display....is that what you want to be looking at all the time you're not being robbed?
 
Cheap decoys on display....is that what you want to be looking at all the time you're not being robbed?
Click to expand...

Beats lots of other things to look at - like photos of my wife's aunt Millie.
 
ok try this one guys
go buy an old firealarm pull station
one of those units you would see in an appartment building hallway
or in the hallway of a school i found one at a garage sale
rig this pull station to be the latch release switch for your hidden gunroom door
no one breaking in would dream of pulling it as they believe the cops and firedepartment
would come bursting through the door in minutes
use the clear plastic straw that comes with a juice box cut it to fit
and it actually looks like the little glass breakaway piece on the fire pullstation
u can open up that door a thousand times just keep putting the piece of straw back
into place as to look like an unbroken glass seal
you'll feel like James Bond everytime you head into your Firearms room!

istockphoto_9314635-fire-alarm-pull-station.jpg
 
well crooks always look for the easy money. After they get in your place and grab something they think is of worth, their going to want to get out and hawk their stolen goods so they can buy some meth or crack rocks.

i've also heard a reccomendation out there for people that keep an emergency cash stash in the house. It's said that it's best to keep a relatively small amount of currency someplace obvious and easy to find. Like keeping a hundred bucks in tens in a kitchen cabinet. That way, crooks are less likely to tear through everything looking for the bail money.
 
I like the idea of the throw away cash in plain view. I might try it. I might try also to put my driver license number in the margin on the back side so if they are caught it proves the money came from me!
 
We go south for 6 months every winter. I have all my good stuff in 2 very heavy and well-secured safes. There is a yardsale nonfunctioning computer setup on my desk and in my gunroom there are 4 nonfunctioning trash guns just hanging on the wall. Idiot dopers will go running out of my house with an armload of nothing. Neighbors keep an EXCELLENT eye on my place, including the police officer and his family who live just over the backyard fence. I'm not too worried.
 
When we bought our first house in Memphis, the old man that lived there before us was broken into. He got a little paranoid and did some pretty cool stuff. There was a pistol/cash drawer under the hanging cabinets in the kitchen. We'd never found it except his family showed us. He also had a door frame that came off the wall and had a cavity where you could hide a shotgun. There were several little compartments all around the house. I kept hoping to stumble on some money, but never did...
 
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