5 Things to Consider Before Purchasing a Gun Safe

What do you want to protect?

What you want to protect and from whom. Take a moment to visualize or jot down what you’re looking to put under lock and key. Traditionally, most large gun safes are designed for the storage of long barreled firearms – your hunting rifles, competition shotguns, or family heirlooms. But our gun safes are also ideal for the storage of pistol collections, important documents, coin collections, cash, and jewelry. Once you start walking around your home or office you might notice several other things that belong in your safe. –. When you’ve decided what you want to protect, you should estimate the value of the items.

What level of security do you need?

The level of security you end up with should reflect two things: the contents of your safe and from whom/what you are securing away your valuables. It might be that your only concern is keeping small kids and your guns and ammo separate from one another. Or maybe its that you have sensitive documents like a house deed, identity cards and birth certificates you wouldn’t want your housekeeping staff to have accidental access to.  Depending on the value you place on these items, there’s a sliding scale for burglary protection and we offer safes that offer very HIGH security, to rather moderately low security.

What fire rating do you need?

While everyone is at some level of risk for fire, understanding your risk is key to selecting the proper gun safe.  If  there isn’t a fire station in a country mile, you might want to consider a safe at the top end of the fire protection spectrum. If you live or work in a more urban environment and fire isn’t the biggest concern, you could probably get away with a 30-minute fire safe. In several corners of our web site you’ll come across testimonials from owners whose gun safes survived some of our nations’ most devastating fires, gas explosions and even tornados.

Where will you install this safe?

Size matters. Will you be locating your safe in the garage, under a desk, in a back office, a closet – or are you building a safe room (in which case, a vault door is an excellent option)? Our safes come in all shapes and sizes. You can choose a left or a right-hand swing. And that matters a great deal too. Think about how you’ll access the safe, what wall the door might face when open, where you’ll stand as you reach for the handle – be careful not to wedge yourself into a corner.

What is your budget?

Unless you’re one of those lucky sorts with a money tree growing in your backyard, you probably have a budget in mind. And there is a difference between cost and value that we’ll explain here – relative to safes. When they’re standing side by side one another – safes can appear essentially the same – they’re all metal security containers, usually rectangular or sometimes square. It’s hard to know what you’re paying for when the major differences are hidden from plain sight. Kind of like your home or car insurance. But if you’ve ever been in a car accident Safes are just like that – a form of insurance.

When evaluating safe’s construction consider door thickness, wall thickness is the body filled with cement or gypsum board?. Does your safe have a relocker? A steel-plated door? Active bolt work? All these things add value AND protection to the safe’s performance. The more steel, the better the body and door fill is, the sophistication of the lock, choice of hardware and the higher the level of protection from fire and burglary – the more a safe will be valued at.