Ok, maybe I’m not being THAT productive, but soon after I wrote the below post, the Mrs. came down into the armory, and I mentioned we’d bought some shelves a few weeks ago and I wouldn’t mind help installing them during the weekend.
Here’s the story. First up, I believe no matter what the law states all guns that are not your immediate go-to gun (as in somebody kicks down your door, or your hear gunshots in your street, the gun you reach for) should be locked up when not in use. It just makes good sense. Guns are expensive so keeping them locked up deters theft, and of course guns you might have for civil unrest/martial law you’ll likely have time to unlock and load them up if you’re smart and have your ear to the ground.
I will also say that I’m not sure I see a huge value for the big expensive real-deal safes. The armory flooded this spring so I needed to elevate my lockers, that was an easy task, might be a bit more of a logistical problem doing that with a 800lb safe. And in the end NOTHING is theft-proof, it is just theft deterrent. Before you get to my armory when I’m not around you have to get through my locked doors, through my alarm system, and then you need to deal with my lockers. If I’m home you’re going to do this on a VERY short shot-clock. Also its much easier to expand the armory with more inexpensive lockers.
And what do you loose? Yeah you can more easily cut through them, or pick the lock. Its easier to lug the whole unit out…but that’s a relative sense, they’re rough to move in empty, fully loaded you’re gonna struggle and make a scene.
I just don’t see the added expense and pain in the ass of moving the safe, and because of that I now have THREE vaults in the armory for the price of one SMALL safe.
With the recent acquisition I’ve found that I have a SHITLOAD of storage space for rifles and shotguns, but I was starting to stack pistols on the pistol shelves, and during the flood my CZ-82 got almost completely submerged as I had run out of space and this gun was just laying on the floor of the vault. (FYI it had only been aquatic for a few hours when I found it I quickly stripped it, wiped it dry with a rag, then sprayed the hell out of it with WD-40, and now two months later, it looks just as good as when I bought it)
So I had an idea, why not consolidate the rifles in one safe, and install shelves and make it handgun only.
Well I took the Mrs. down to the container store and turned her loose. Sadly she had a seizure during the trip which cut the shopping short, but we ended up with a small metal folding shelf-system. So I emptied one of the vault, folded up the shelf system, inserted and deployed (fits like a damn glove!) and lined the metal shelves with non-skid matting to protect gun finish.
OMG do I have space for handguns now!
Better yet, I have a handgun safe, and a long-gun safe…and a safe that has NOTHING but Eastern Bloc guns! How cool is that?
OK I’m happy!
Hope the Missus is okay, she’s still in our prayers constantly and we’ll be anxiously awaiting August.
Next, dude- this post is worthless without pics 🙂
Honestly, as someone who is more of a pistol shooter than anything else, I would love to see a shot of your set up. Sounds very intriguing.
Oh yeah she’s fine, seizures are just a fact of life for us for the last few years. They’re no fun, but thankfully the medication controls them as much as they do, so all we have to deal with is some basic unpleasantness. This day was a “Bad”one as far as they go, as she was REALLY confused and irritable for about 3 hours….then suddenly like somebody flipped a switch, she was fine. More common was last night where she spaced out for 60 seconds in the grocery store….then she bounced back and we finished our shopping. It’ll be awesome to be done with them, but until that happens we’re coping just fine, thanks.
As for Pix, I have a few misgivings about posting my security set up for all to see. But check your email. And anybody else who wants to see AND has my non-blog email, drop me a note and I’ll ship over the pic I snapped.
Where I live, you could blast a safe and nobody would notice. Am I going to lock up projects on the bench too? Plus, some stuff looks COOL hanging on the walls. Fellow I know had a Bobcat stolen, that wasn’t on a trailer…they must have had their own. I reckon safes slow people down some, but they can be stolen too. Locks and safes are for honest people. Thieves who know what they are targeting don’t pay attention to locks or laws. Not saying safes are useless but I can’t see mandating “all firearms not likely to be used have to be locked up at all times, are you channeling Richard Daley?
I’d say, not letting people know where you live, except in a very vague sense, and what your gun collection is is probably as, if not more useful, than physical security. If people know where you live and what guns you have, you very well may be targeted by professional thieves. That’s why a number of my NFA mechanic friends are P.O. boxes in obscure rural areas and are like me, “never invite anybody to their home, only give P.O. Box to anybody not severely trusted, just meet in neutral locations for both business and entertaining”. Outside of immediate family, 2 close friends, the UPS and Fed-Ex dude, and the Federal Government that admitted to monitoring me when I published some web information and sent me that neat DHS portfolio that says “One Team, One Fight” on it, pretty much nobody knows where I live except in a rather vague sense. The county is 150,000 people and 700 square miles, so you’d have to throw a lot of darts guess by county…
Some stuff is locked up and some stuff isn’t in my existence and anybody that wanted to clean me out would “struggle and make a scene” that probably wouldn’t be seen by anybody anyway trying to load out. THE REAL DEAL SAFES are probably not going to get carried off, just like it’s unlikely my mills and lathes would get carried off, light-weight safes in my context wouldn’t provide much security at all…AND THEN: they’d have a lot of stuff that they couldn’t buy ammo for with a very limited collector market that often don’t even say what they’re chambered in, as many aren’t what they were born as, so they’d be really hard to sell and pawning stolen guns is a bad idea because they check the serial numbers, or they might put the wrong cartridge in, guessing at the correct thing by what they can make fit in the chamber, and blow their hands or face up. 🙂
Second thing. My go-to guns vary depending on where I am on my property or what vehicles I’m in, as it’s easier to have them scattered about different places where I might be than carrying one particular one around all the time.
Not sure if a safe full of (y)Easty guns is as cool as a lot of other collections you could have, but you seem to like them so I guess it’s OK for you 🙂 To my taste, a safe full of Westley Richards, Holland and Holland, or Gibbs or actual historic military rifles with known battle history would be significantly cooler. To each his own. Who steals naggers/sks/wasrs/ak variants anyway? They’re cheap and commonly available.
I vote for gates, electric fencing, razor wire, dogs, laws that say you can shoot home invaders and burglars even if they are on your neighbor’s land and stealing his stuff, and real safes and safety deposit boxes at the bank for the stuff you’re going to bother putting in a safe. Alarm systems and lightweight physical security have limited utility in rural scenarios as nobody will hear them and response times are slow and cops don’t respond to private alarm system calls very fast because most all of them turn out to be false alarms. Your universal “rule of thumb” doesn’t make much sense in my context just like it wouldn’t make much sense for you to have an AR set up specifically for zapping coyotes or loading dies for .500BPE.
Hey I said “I believe no matter what the law states all guns that are not your immediate go-to gun should be locked up when not in use. It just makes good sense. ”
No mandate there! Just what I think is a good idea. Hell you could put a locked-and-loaded M2 on your front porch, and if somebody shot somebody with it, it would be 100% their fault, and ZERO fault of you because #1. They were trespassing, #2 they were fiddling with another man’s property without his permission, and #3. They were fiddling in an unsafe manor. That being said I think it might be better to tuck it away a bit.
You won’t see me mandating jack shit. We’re all big-kids here, I trust you to do what you’d like.
Actually, in Texas you could be prosecuted for “reckless endangerment” same as if you go into a store and leave your vehicle running and unlocked. 🙂
I know we’re all big kids, but in a severely rural context lightweight safes just don’t mean much. And heavy safes don’t mean much if it’s a professional gun thief like Tim McVeigh that targeted you. He mostly stole from gun dealers and collectors and ripped stuff off from the military. Gun dealers he had befriended and he was on the gun show circuit too. Did you know that? People like him are why most collectors and dealers don’t let anybody know where they live unless they have a storefront. The guy who is a criminal and knows what a M.A.T. 49-54 is (not a typo, different gun than a M.A.S.) is probably a “pro” and highly motivated and won’t be deterred by physical security or threat of armed response.
Would be funny if somebody stole one of my rifles that isn’t chambered in what you might think it was and blew themselves up…Remember kiddies, if it’s a sporterized milsurp, it just might not be what the original rifle was chambered in. Boomer Lad chuckles thinking about some stupid thief trying to shoot .30-06 in Garands that aren’t .30-06 anymore or sticking 8mm Mouser in a Norma Magnum with less than an 8mm bore but where the cartridge would fit and fire.
I still think the better part of good security is never inviting people over and not telling them where you live unless they have a badge or some other legal cause to know.
I recently got a 72″ x 40″ safe, about 1100 lbs (zercools pics are pretty close to what I got). I moved it in entirely by myself. Up four stairs down the hallway, into the closet. A thief who wasn’t concerned about scratching the doorways could have it out on his truck in 15 minutes… I did bolt it down, but the thing is that mass isn’t always the answer to theft proofing.
Smaller cabinets are really good though, and you can’t beat the portability and flexability. I went for the big boy for fire protection and keeping the NFA stuff secured when I am out and the GF or company is here. But now that it’s full, I can definitely see one or two more cabinets to store some of the lower end guns, nonfunctional/project guns, unobtanium spare parts, etc.
Any chance of a pic on how you managed to add shelving inside your cab?
How did you manage to move such a heavy safe by yourself? I wouldn’t exactly call you a small guy, but have you been concealing some Mr. Universe Muscles from the rest of us?
I moved one of my lathes that weighs every bit of 875lbs twice in my life, as in from one house to another…with levers, rollers, and boards and cardboard to slide it around on. One helper. It was a sumbitch to do but it didn’t take long. Biggest fear was it falling on one of us getting it on and off the truck bed, because it’s pretty top-heavy and we couldn’t lift it together except at one end of the other, much less by ourselves. I’d called local moving companies and they all said “875lbs? NO WAY!” except the people that wanted to charge me as much as the lathe was worth to move it.
I’m still glad I live where people don’t even trespass, much less smash and grab, because I like to have some wall hangers. It’s part of my decor and fits in with the dead animals and artillery shells and the lamp I made out of a grenade so when the anti-gun sis visits she has to touch a grenade to get an end table reading light in the living room, as it only has a touch switch BY DESIGN, no mechanical switch. And The BREN still is spending it’s off time on the coffee table, because I’m not married and nobody yells at me for keeping it there. Nothing like kicking back, listening to some decent music while reclined on the couch, and pondering a fine firearm whilst scratching yer dog behind the ears. 🙂
Just basic physics, levers, pulleys, a few teflon pads, and a strategically placed smoke detector to cover the small hole that happened when I didn’t think through a move.
40″ wide safe down a 16′ x 41″ long hallway passing 5 doors on the way – it was Sokoban without the unicorns. Did involve a few passages in and out a window to get into the proper room to best steer it.
As to display guns, I’d love to but I am too concerned about a gun getting stolen. I’ve walked through the house and found locations that I could have a gun or rack up and not be visible from outside. Even went so far as to get a couple of brass wall mounts – maybe I’ll try having a “weekend hanger” when I am around the ranch.
Where a real safe really shines is in a fire.
Not that I have a real one… I use lockers too.
My main concern is (a) fire, and (b) stopping the smash/grab attacks. I’m well aware that any determined thief is going to simply walk away with the safe and open it as his leisure – but hopefully it’ll at least slow him down some.
That’s what insurance is for, when it really comes down to it.