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!
