Why Don't You Own A Safe?

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No offense to the low income folks here...

But Lowes has two safes (RSC's) that are a very decent size.

Liberty Centurions, one is less than $400 the other is less than $700. They deliver and install for less than $75 as well.



No excuses - yes, the pro burglar type will get in eventually - but trust me, my movers bashed in the lock to my safe by accident and the pro safe guy took over one hour and he wasn't even able to open it then (I waved him off and junked the safe, it was empty).

Peace of mind (for most occasions) for $500 or $800. Simple.
 
I don't own a safe for several reasons, no particular order.
1. Expensive
2. I'm active military. Moving every couple years with a big heavy safe would be very difficult, not to mention expensive.
3. When you move around all the time, you never know where you're going to live. You never know if you're actually going to have a place to put this safe. This house I do. The last 3 houses, I didn't. The house before that, I did. But everywhere before that, I didn't. So basically in 15 years, I've only lived in 2 places where I had a place to put a safe. (without it being in a kid's room, since I feel like there's something wrong with storing guns in a toddler's room.)
 
The smaller Centurion safe from Lowes is the size of a small desk. Easily moved, and if a hassle, just sell it locally when leaving for $200. $200 every two years is not bad.
 
WOW! Very few first hand accounts about stolen firearms. I had 5 stolen firearms a few years back. I was having carpet laid in my home. The carpet layers stole my firearms. Whats worse I paid them to come into my home!:cuss:

That was not the low point. That came when I went to the local LEO station to fill our a report on the stolen firearms. When I had to pass that sheet of paper back to the officer behind the desk knowing that he and his coworkers may have to pay for me being CHEAP! :banghead:

My insurance paid off so I could replace the guns. So I was "made whole". The report limited my legal liability. It did nothing for my moral obligation. I got one of the stolen firearms back, a Luger. So now I'm only missing 4, but that does nothing for my peace of mind. I pray every night that nothing bad happens because of one of the 4 missing guns. One of the missing is a 44 MAG so they have some real danger.:mad:

I made a promise to myself and the LEO's that I would buy a safe BEFORE I replaced any guns. I kept my promise to them. I don't want any gun owner to go through this so I recommend that you stop buying guns until you have a safe. If nothing else even if they (the BGs) break in and steal the guns you can say that you've done everything you could afford to stop this. Will it stop them NO, will it slow them down Maybe. But you will have done everything that you could do to prevent the occurrence.
 
Thanks, rtp - in this day and age, when a moderately good RSC costs $400 - there are no excuses.
 
How do you get a 1000 lbs safe upstairs? I don't want to keep my guns downstairs. I don't have tens of thousands wrapped up in firearms. The better thing to do is build a false wall and not tell a soul.
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I friend of mines dad has a HUGE safe upstairs. You could fit 4-5 people in it standing. I asked him how he got it upstairs and he wouldn't tell me. Lol
 
I have a Cheap safe that mostly serves as anti-child protection, soon a nice 500+ lb one will go into the basement and be bolted to the foundation.

The next step is to purchase 2-3 more of these cheap safes, fill them with a mixture of concrete and loose bolts/nuts for "jingly bits" and leave them at the forward edges of the house closets.

If it doesn't slow the 5 minute robber down enough to catch them in the act, at least they'll get a hernia, then a great reward once they get inside.
 
I must say I always had a locked container, of some kind. Even when I lived in apartments. You can get a wall safe, "not really a safe", but will stop someone from picking up a firearm and pulling the trigger. This can be picked up for $50.00 or less,"nowadays" on craigs list, or ebay. I was single till I was 50, having 30+ woman work for me, plus hundreds every week enter my business, I could not sleep peacfully with one of them in my house, without my gun being locked up.Now with wife grandkids, "came with the package", etc, I couldn't imagine not being able to lock everything away with 4 little kids running around. When you are single, especially, if you drink, occasionally, and have women sleep over, how can you not have a secure place to keep your stuff with someone who you hardlly know in your house. The alarm is a given, they are free in most states, monitoring is as low as 10-30 per month, even without the monitoring, you can put your own in for a hundred bucks. At least you will be awake if something is going down. I never had a woman tell me she didn't like the idea of a burgler alarm being turned on when she slept over. It shows that you are responsible if anything. "they like that". Don't wait for something stupid to happen, spend the 100-200 dollars, and at least get the minimum protection. A drop box bolted down, or a wall safe screwed into a stud. It could save your life. And you can take it with you if and when you leave. When you get a house you own, you "must" have a safe, alarm, and hopefully a dog, in this day and age. Crooks will steer clear of a dog friendlly house 90% of the time, unless "you" are being targeted. Don't put up signs or stickers saying you have a gun or alarm, that defeats the purpose of having them. It's a bitch losing stuff you saved your whole life to get, including your life over something so miniscule.
 
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from O.P. :
A friend of mine has a lot of firearms and doesn't have any of them in a safe. He believes that that would be putting them in one convenient location for the skilled thief to concentrate on.
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Safes for guns are a relatively new phenominom. When I was but a mere lad, I knew of no one who owned or used a safe. They were kept in a closet, a furniture-style gun cabinet (sometimes with a lock but many times in an open gun rack on the wall). We had few problems with that setup. Kids left the guns alone and few got stolen (I remember no stories of stolen guns).

Another new thing is owning 20, 40 or 100 guns. We all owned a pistol, a shotgun and 2-3 rifles. That covered all bases.
 
Interesting thread.

Lots of excuses for not owning a safe. Most of the logic has holes in it. Big enough to push a safe through.

Before I go further, I would just like to point out where I'm coming from. I used to own a security business.

Let's look at a few of these excuses:

"A pro will get in if he really wants to"

I hear this a lot about a lot of security issues, and it's just plain stupid. First off, the vast majority of residential break ins are not pros. They're kids, crackheads, and opportunists. Very few of them will spend more than a few minutes in a house. Very few of them will have any idea how to get into a safe. And here's an idea: Hide the safe. If it takes them more time to find it, they'll have less time to get into it.

"I have insurance"

Good for you. Insurance is a wonderful thing. But it won't bring back something that had sentimental value, and it won't bring back someone that was killed using your unsecured firearm. We all have a responsibility to keep our guns out of the hands of criminals.

"I don't have kids"

You may have other family or friends with kids. Very few of us are hermits. And you never know when some of the neighbor kids might come over uninvited when you're not home. And when you come in, you could be looking down the barrel of yor own gun.

"Putting my guns in a safe makes it easier for the thief to steal them all at once"

This is just plain silly. Again, you're only making the odds of coming home and looking down the barrel of your own gun a lot more likely. How about multiple cheap safes? That would seem like a better idea. And where ever you were hiding the guns? Hide the safes too! So many people seem to put the safe right where you would look for one.

"I can't afford one"

Seriously? Even a lock box bolted down would be better than nothing, and those are like $50. But don't give up. You can have a real safe! You don't have money because the economy is in the toilet? Join the club! There are dozens of businesses closing up every week around here. Keep your eyes open for any business that would use a small to medium size safe. Restaurants are a great example. You might find yourself a pretty good deal. Just in the last couple of months I've picked up 2 small safes, one from a bicycle shop and another from a restaurant. They were throwing them away.

Did I miss any?

Az
 
I am getting a safe very soon, but around where I live (rural area) there is no crime (excepting some people going throught unlocked cars) because everyone knows that everyone around here has at least their turkey and or deer shotgun and many have a lot more.
Around here farmers still use rocksalt for those pesky teenagers.
Many people feel that safes are not needed.
 
I have been looking at the larger of the two safes lowes carries. Does anyone have one and if so could you provide some feedback.
 
Long ago, when there was 1 car in the driveway, and pop owned a deer rifle, a gun safe was for the gunstore. Now, as Minn pointed out, with some gun collections reaching 100 or even more weapons a safe is required, rather like hearing protection. Many years ago, when I was a lad,(and before miranda had rights) some of dads guns were stolen. The police grew increasingly nervous as he read off the list. By the time he got to the tommy gun and grandpas belt fed browning the kid gloves came off and the rubber hoses came out. All the guns, except for a pellet pistol, were returned within 24 hours. There was a safe in the house the next day. These days all of the expensive weapons and class III are stored at a professional armoured site. For rare, expensive, or exotic weapons, a home safe isn't enough these days. The home safe is for the more common eaily replaceable ones.
 
Foolish not to own a safe. The skill, time, or level of expertise necessary to crack a quality $1500 would have those folks looking to steal more than what I could possibly own/store in a $1500 safe.

These safes are designed to prevent basic fires and thefts, which are quite common. I have NEVER read any reports that the $1500 range of safes are cracked... simply because I believe it is rarely ever happens. Again, if you got the skill to crack one, you are on to much bigger things than what I've got in my modest safe. When you are a professional safe cracker of that caliber, prison isn't worth the trinkets I possess... they are after major scores.

And cutting the safe will destroy the contents.

And beating and prying it would take hours and hours of loud noises and destruction, and my alarm system would have long alerted the police. Heaven save them if I come home during the burglary...

Conversely, if you don't have a safe, it would take less than 10 minutes to kick in your front door and ransack your house of all or most of your valuables. Where do you hind them...? Let me guess: Freezer. Couch and Lazyboy. Bed. Nightstand and dresser. Bedroom closet (above door, hanging in/behind clothes/false door at back of closet). Bathroom vanity. Toilet bowl tank. Kitchen cupboard. Oven. Desk drawer and office cabinet. TV Armoir. Not very clever. Two people could ransack a house in minutes relatively undetected from the outside and even before police could respond to a silent alarm.

Or a minor fire and the ensuing smoke and water damage would destroy anything of much value.
 
I have found out recently that in my city of roughly 160,000 that there isn't a place where I can buy a gun safe other than Bass Pro. I went to one of the local locksmiths that has a safe in front of his store and advertises safes in his brochure and was told to buy on the internet because he didn't fool with safes anymore. I walked out as he was still rambling.

Bass Pro will not even help you load a safe, let alone deliver one to you or help you set it.

There is a guy one city over that sells safes but he is a class-A buttcrack (think the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld), so, I will never give him a dime of my money.

So, at this point I'm kind of stuck.
 
Walmart here in fl has conatainers and cheapo safes, so does Sams Club, Costco, Lowes, and Home Depot. I don't think that only the Fl stores have these. Also Amazon has or at least used to have cheapo safes with "free Shipping", you aren't looking hard enough. Here
http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs...safes&langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053
The first place I looked Home depot online, has $100.00 ones, you can find plenty if you do a search of all your local stores online sites. There has to be an HD or Lowes near you
 
There is acompany making safes you assemble on site to avoid the problems of moving a heavy one piece unit. It uses heavy lugs and trunnions to prevent forceable entry
 
i used to move around a lot... That was an ok reason, but still not good enough not to have a RSC lol. I mean, sure a pro is gonna get in and get your stuff no matter what. It is all about doing your best to avoid scrutiny by said pro. Then it just becomes a matter of putting your safe in a good place and using some ingenuity.

The ones I mainly watch out for are the smash and grabbers. They happen all the time here. These guys want to be in and out with all they can carry before the fuzz gets close. Cracking a safe or rsc usually just will not fit into their time slot... especially if you have any kind of alarm-- you do right?!?

SO basically, there is no GOOD reason to not have an RSC or safe... Even the cheap ones will probably deter typical burglars.
 
Even the cheap [RSCs] will probably deter typical burglars.
Click to expand...
Even a well hidden metal cabinet is a substantial step up in security from nothing at all. Nothing wrong with something better, but IMO a moderately priced RSC is all 99% of folks really need.

:)
 
Hide your RCS someplace other than the master bedroom. The very first place that the bad guys look is in the MBR-dresser, under mattress, closet. Speed is their method/plan, keep the good stuff out of their sight.
 
concealing a safe is the best option.

One Idea I had was a flush mount wall-locker type safe, behind a bedroom wall-mirror, or other major room detail. They'd have to know it's there to want to steal from inside it, after all.

So long as you're not advertising you have them....then you're a-ok,
 
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