Somebody broke into this guy's gun safe.

[scaatylobo]

+ alarm

I trust my safe only since I have a complete house alarm with radio/battery backup.

Was worth the price as far as peace of mind goes.

Also have other 'backup' items to stop or slow down a potential burglar,pays to have seen a few hundred burglary's.

 

[heeler]

I have looked at that particular gun safe at Academy Sports.
Those things are really cheap,and very typical of your sub $1000.00 gun safes.
The locked door had a lot of play in it and once you rapped your knuckles on the thin body it sounded like you where hitting an empty 55 gallon barrel.
The door only has a very thin face of steel at best 12 gauge or perhaps it's really 14 gauge.
The door has no plate steel in it's entire make up.
Look at how neat the cuts are and how uniform the bend is where they pryed it up after cutting it.
Do you think a door made from 1/4,3/8,or 1/2 inch steel plate would be that easy??
With power tools and time all gun safes are going to be defeated but this is where a better safe with thicker steel might have won the day.

 

[M-Cameron]

haha...its times like this that i love my safe....

my safe, is locked inside another safe..cemented into the wall...behind a hidden wall....

if you can manage to even find it, and some how get through both safes....you honestly deserve to take my stuff.

 

[MLee]

Better quality safes have a TL rating from Underwriter labs. Typically these are TL15 and TL30, which mean they are rated for either 15 minutes or 30 minutes against tools like carbide saws and drills, torches, etc. A rating of RSC means a residential use built to withstand a 5 minute attack. I used to work for a safe manufacturer who went through the testing at the UL lab in Chicago. We had to supply the blueprints and material specs for the safe, then they would literally hit the stopwatch and see how long it took them to get into it. It was a real eye opener for the engineers and plant manager. Safes we designed with plate steel, hardened concrete, ball bearing shields around lock mechanisms, etc. had a hard time passing these tests. Best case is a safe you have will defeat an amateur and make a pro look somewhere else for an easier target.

 

[Azb]

haha...its times like this that i love my safe....

my safe, is locked inside another safe..cemented into the wall...behind a hidden wall....

if you can manage to even find it, and some how get through both safes....you honestly deserve to take my stuff.

Yep. Some call me paranoid, but my safe is bolted to concrete, inside a locked, secret room. It would take someone longer to find it than it would to break into it.

And no one except my and my dad know it's there.

Az

 

[a1abdj]

I was just looking at safes last week,will ask alot more questions when I go back to purchase one.

Just make sure you know the qualifications of who you are asking. There are several retailers that sell gun safes. Just because they sell them doesn't mean they know squat, although they may sound knowledgeable.

It would be best to verify anything that a gun safe salesman says.

At least they didn't get the door open

I have that brand safe and it may not be a real safe but it was $500. and they didn't get the door open.

the only reason they didn't get the door open was,

wait for it

they were idiots, and besides, they could have cut the side and saved a bunch of time

That hole was large enough to drive a bus through. If that hole was placed elsewhere, or with a bit of additional knowlege, that safe would have been easily opened.

It is very common, even on true burglary rated safes, for the bodies to be weaker than the door. Even though this is almost always the case, the doors on safes are usually what the bad guy goes after. If you place the safe properly, the door can also be the only surface easily accessible. A well built door is a good starting point.

That's one of the reasons I dont like composite doors.

Real composite doors, and real composite safes usually offer more security than a solid plate safe. However, this is another situation where a gun safe manufacturer has borrowed a term from the real safe manufacturers, and use it in an entirely different way.

Composite safes (doors) in the world of real safes have thin outer skins, and a cavity that is "cement" filled. A sheet of steel wrapped around a piece of gypsum board is not composite.

 

[ridgerunner1965]

im not sure if its still on youtube but i watched a clip of two guys breaking into your common variety gun safe, the ones that go for 1000-1500 buks. they used two common not over large crowbars and were in the safe in less than 2 min.they did tip it over flat on the floor door, up and that seemed to help them.it would of been harder with the safe upright.it was very scary how fast they opened the door.

 

[TrickyDick]

I literally just got a gun safe for christmas from my in-laws, and from this post, i'll be hiding it in the XXXXXX, because it is a somewhat cheaper safe. (it would Be silly of me to tell you where I was going to put it)

 

[JohnBT]

"If that hole was placed elsewhere, or with a bit of additional knowlege, that safe would have been easily opened."

But it wasn't, they didn't and it wasn't. The guy was lucky, at least they didn't get the door open.

I keep $300 and a new bottle of Jack Daniels on top of my safe. It will deter the lazy thieves. My deductible is more than that.

 

[a1abdj]

But it wasn't, they didn't and it wasn't. The guy was lucky

I have seen unlocked safes broken into when all the thief had to do was turn the handle and swing the door. In fact, I have even seen an empty safe broken into where the doors were already swung open. Most criminals are dumb. If they were smart, they probably wouldn't be criminals to begin with.

If you're feeling lucky, why waste your money on one of these safes in the first place? The manufacturers claim you are buying security, not luck.

 

[harmonic]

im not sure if its still on youtube but i watched a clip of two guys breaking into your common variety gun safe, the ones that go for 1000-1500 buks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBhOjWHbD6M

 

[gordy]

Any safe can and will be gotten into. It just depends on the intelligences and tools of the bad guys. Time is a factor also.:banghead:
Banks get robbed and they have some nice safes.
I know a guy who locks his truck doors in the garage. I ask him, what about the hammer right over there?

 

[Messenger Guard]

Would an open bowl of black powder in the floor of the safe have deterred the fellow who used the spark emitting saw?

 

[Sniderman]

Ruger 50th Anniversary 44mag Flattop
Ruger#1S 45-70
Ruger#1A 30-06
Ruger#1A 30-30
Ruger Red Label 12 SS

You, Sir, Have exquisite taste in Firearms.

 

[Onward Allusion]

Dang. Terrible thing. I feel bad for the guy.

This just goes to prove that if they want your stuff, the BG will find a way. Oh wait, maybe he should have had a fire vault with 12 inch walls and 4 hour rating built into his house. <yes, I am being sarcastic here>

 

[writerinmo]

I have one similar to this, I don't consider it a safe, more of a storage locker. BUT it is bolted to the concrete wall and floor and is inside what looks like a cheap walmart cabinet that is in amongst piles of boxes and other assorted junk that my wife has accumulated over the years, no reason to suspect that it has anything other than more junk in it. Plus my current gun collection really sucks... nothing worth over a few hundred bucks.

 

[JellyJar]

Buy a safe like that one. Then only put cheap/worthless stuff inside and hide the good stuff else where or buy a really good safe for the good stuff that is hidden better.

If the cheap safe is easy to find, unless the burglar knows better, they won't look for another one.

 

[brandon_mcg]

that sucks. i see they left the rangefinder sitting on top of the safe though. how nice of them.

 

[M-Cameron]

well it seems like the obvious thing to do would be to pass a law that would make it illegal to break open a safe with a carbide saw.......duh!

 

[seed]

I believe it is more than possible to mount a small camera, triggered by a motion detector which is linked to your iPhone or Droid. If anybody breaks into your house, you can set it up so that you will be first to know. If nothing else, it is peace of mind that while you were gone, nothing happened if you did not get alerted. And if the camera is good, you can ID the scumbag.

Additionally, you can set it up so that if anybody comes nosing at your front door, you can be alerted...etc.

 

[sprithitler]

Any safe is just a matter of buying time. My 155 kg (empty) gunsafe was a pain to get into my secondfloor apartment. It is not bolted to the floor, but anyone turning it over and/or going to work on it with power tools will be heard by the neighbors, not to mention by the two dogs in the house, who Will investigate. Anyone trying to get the safe out of the house will make enough of a racket to get the neighbors to investigate.
My (mandated by law) gunsafe is just another layer of security added to living in a quite nice neighborhood (no burglary in this house or the neighbouring houses in the last 63 years), living on the second floor, having good (nosy) neighbors, having adequate locks on door and windows, driving an inconspicious car and so on. The risk of anyone getting to my guns are quite minuscule and most burglars would anyway probably settle for taking my computers, my camera and other easily sold electronics rather than trying to get to what they would (and rightly so) believe to be just some hunting rifles that are quite useless to criminals.

 

[taliv]

This is why I don't own any tools.



(Ok it's not really. I don't own any tools cause I spent all my money on guns)

 

[DBR]

I like these:

http://burglarbomb.com/

In fact I have several where needed. They are tied into my main alarm system so the monitoring company can tell if they fired.

 

[bushmaster1313]

I would think the best thing is to have an alarm on the safe that responds to vibration unless you deactivate it with a code.

Remember, spring guns are illegal in almost all jurisdictions!

 

[DBR]

I don't know if you were addressing me but an alarm activated OC dispenser is not a spring gun, It is an area denial agent and considered non lethal.

The problem with even the best alarms is the LEO response time. Property crimes are generally considered a low priority unless you have a system with live video so the LEO can see the perps are there and active or they believe lives are at risk.