Posted on 07/22/2015 7:34:34 AM PDT by w1n1
Not long ago, I was in the market for a small handgun safe. After visiting a local gun shop and bringing home something made by GunVault, I took my new safe out of its box, and wondered if I’d spent too much. Up close, the device looked insubstantial. A nagging suspicion motivated me to go online, where I quickly discovered research by Marc Tobias and Tobias Bluzmanis of Investigative Law Offices and Security Laboratories. Their work confirmed my suspicion about the safe. It could be broken into easily.
Tobias and Bluzmanis, who specialize in evaluating security systems, did an analysis of handgun safes in 2012. Their investigation began with a Stack-On product called the Strong Box. About 200 of these had been issued to personnel of Clark County Sheriff’s Department in Vancouver, Wash., after the ten-year-old daughter of a Clark County Deputy was accidently shot and killed by her brother who had managed to get a hold of his father’s department-issued handgun.
I Started Thinking of these Safes as Chinese-made, Battery-Operated Toys for Gun Owners.
The Sheriff’s Department instituted a policy that all department-issued weapons must be secured in gun safes. Thus the Strong Boxes, which were issued to personnel between 2003 and 2004. In 2010, however, the three-year-old son of Detective Ed Owens died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the boy’s sister was able to remove a handgun from their father’s department issued Strong Box.
Tobias and Bluzmanis found that the Stack-On safe in question could be vibrated open. Lifting it by one side several inches from a floor and dropping it was all that was needed. Their investigation then broadened into an examination of other Stack-On safes, as well as safes made by AMSEC, Bulldog Vaults and GunVault. None of the safes they examined proved secure. Tobias wrote a piece for Forbes magazine on their findings, and posted video of their examinations on his YouTube channel.
He also filed a class-action lawsuit against Stack-On in 2012, prompting Stack-On to settle out of court. Tobias and Bluzmanis are now examining Stack-On’s latest product designs and are considering filing another lawsuit. Read the rest of this Gun Safe Cracking story here and their testing procedures.
I have a few insecure lock boxes because I have small children who have friends.
My long guns are in a locked closet with hinges that are locked, but I haven’t gone further. I have friends with INCREDIBLE gun safes, setups you wouldn’t even believe.
My reasoning is: If I’m not home, the thieves can crack any safe at their leisure (as cited above). If I am home, and awake, I have a good chance to use a weapon. If I’m asleep, the dogs will wake me up, see above.
If my alarms, and dogs, fail and a thief has a gun in my six year old’s ear, I will open the safe.
All this adds up to no safe.
There is a brand “Canon” that warrants replacement of the safe and it’s contents (guns only) if it’s cracked in a private residence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tTvW83SCLQ
If thieves had such construction grade skills and tools, they would have jobs. They are actually mostly lazy and unskilled, and the house down the street has no safe at all. A quality safe is very good protection against the real world threat.
And then, there is fire to consider.
I was introduced to a relative’s super secret hush hush safe at the age of 6. Even then I couldn’t understand the “safe” part since it was the size of a tackle box and had the combination taped to the bottom.
I use a vline pistol box, which has a mechanical push-button lock.
The video of the little kids bumping open one of the stack on boxes is terrifying.
Liberty!
I don't know about that. All it takes it $50 dollars worth of tools you can get from any Loews hardware store. Granted, this safe would probably protect your guns from kids and armatures just looking to break in your house and grab what they can quickly carry out - but for a pro or anyone who's just put his mind to it, this safe provides no protection at all. Two guys could peel that safe in three minutes. The video does show what to look for in a heavy gun safe to offer the most protection. But it looks like the $1000 safe you buy at a Cabella's doesn't offer much protection at all from someone who knows what they are doing and it only takes watching a video on youtube to know what you are doing.
I recently tried moving a fifties era office safe from a relatives carport. It wasn’t that big and I could sort of roll the semi frozen wheels.
Thought a two ton engine hoist could lift it a few inches to get it on a flat trailer.
That safe didn’t budge. The hoist got some of its bolts stretched. Have to bring in something better.
Sure they are. The question is not "Can professional burglars defeat your favorite safe?" The question is "How long will professional burglars take to defeat your favorite safe?"
The point is not to stop them. You can't. The point is to slow them down enough that they might decide to do something else, instead.
” ... it’s not a gun safe. Its a gun case.”
Or a cabinet. A sheet metal cabinet will slow down a determined thief, but that’s it. But it’s better than keeping your heirloom shotgun under the bed.
My father generously offered to give me his gun cabinet: a beautiful wooden piece of furniture, pecan I think, with glass panels that display the long guns and a locking base compartment for ammo, skeleton key for a lock a paper clip would pick.
Not sure he understood, but I thanked him and declined. That’s a `smash and grab’ waiting to happen.
No country for old men, huh?
Yes. But how much did the people who owned the defective safes get?
Well put!
Good point.
99% of homeowner gun thefts are committed by family, friends or acquaintances of the gun owner. If we're going to the trouble of securing the collection, we should go to the trouble of keeping said collection a secret as much as possible.
Safes and locks keep honest people honest , some people can’t help themselves, they have sticky fingers.
Buy the safe but keeps the weapons in a hidden compartment in a wall. The thieves will waste their time breaking into the safe. If you have an alarm system with cameras you give the police a chance to catch the thief.
If you are home you can pull out a weapon stashed around the home in hidden compartments.
Probably about as much as anyone in any class action gets.
Custom made.
Better than a safe.
I tried putting on this thread but not successful, so here’s the youtube link to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erGOJxQIf5c
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.