I have previously kept my guns in a few security cabinets, the $80 variety. Nothing wrong with them, and they were perfectly adequate to achieve my goal of keeping my guns out of the hands of little nieces, nephews, and neighborhood kids visiting my home. They would not slow down a thief as they could be easily defeated with a long handled screwdriver. I have known for a long time that I needed to upgrade my security, but indecisiveness was my problem.
This week I purchased a Browning Sportster 33 gun safe. 655lbs empty and lots of useable space. I had been wanting to go with Liberty safes, but the lack of a local vendor and the fact that I did not want to pay for a safe to be shipped caused me to focus my search on locally available models. A friend advised me to avoid shipping costs on a safe for some reasons I will share with you all.
I narrowed my choice to locally available stock of Winchester or Browning, but a side by side comparison showed the Browning to be significantly more secure and of higher quality. In all fairness, this was not an apples to apple comparison as the Browning was nearly twice the cost of the Winchester, so I would have certainly expected better quality. In all, I compared Browning, Winchester, Sentry, Stack-On, and Cannon side by side. The prices were all different so it was not really fair, but that was the hand I was dealt.
This site was a great resource but last year I was befriended by a gentleman who works in bank security. He does not sale or service safes, and knows little about gun specific safes, but is very well versed in bank vaults and explained a lot of security concepts with me which helped me make a choice as I applied those concepts to gun safes. He tells me most of his clients have what he refers to as moderate risk vaults, meaning they store 5 million or less in cash. 5 million sounds high risk to me, but what do I know? Most of the safe owners on this forum are likely already familiar with this stuff, but for the guys like me when I was looking and thinking about security, this may be helpful.
The first thing my friend told me was to change the way I think about safes. Don't necessarily worry about getting the "most secure" safe. Any safe can be defeated by an individual with the time, tools, and know-how. Think of a safe as an hour glass. How long is it going to take to breach the safe? Time is a thief's enemy whether it is a bank robbery or a home burglary. As long as the safe is bolted down so that it cannot be easily taken off site or tipped over, and as long as it cannot be defeated by simple hand tools, most safes are going to hold up against a smash and grab burglary. Most home burglars are not equipped to deal with a safe.
From the thief's perspective, it is a "sweat equity" issue. How much work and risk is that thief going to commit to getting at an unknown reward? This is a different standard with a home safe compared to a bank vault. A thief going after a vault has a good idea of what is in there, but the guys who smash a window to get into your house are not doing it because they like hard work. Most burglars need to get in and get out and don't have a lot of time to mess with a safe.
Practice discretion when talking about your safe. If you tell people you have a safe with 100K in it and you are heading for Hawaii for two weeks, you may have a problem, although as my friend noted, you are more likely setting yourself up for a home invasion that a burglary. Let's face it, most bank robberies are hold-ups and very few are vault breaches. If you follow that little bit of good sense, it goes back to the "hour glass" rule. How long does that safe need to hold up?
If you have a remote vacation home or cabin, with some valuable guns, jewelry or cash, you need a lot of sand in that hour glass. (I know, an hour glass is only an hour, no matter how big or small. That is not the point, just go with it...) If you have a property where someone can walk in with a torch and work unmolested for a good period of time, you need to be looking at a top of the line, high dollar safe. You may well need something that can hold up to all but a thief who really knows what he is doing. Fortunately, there are not a whole lot of those guys floating around.
Unless there is a serious time factor favoring the thief, almost any reasonable quality safe will work just fine. For that reason, my friend suggested that I not pay to ship a safe, but to put the money I would have spent on shipping, into the safe and deliver it myself. (I spent a lot of years working as a rigger so delivering my own safe is not the issue that it might be for others).
With that advice, I proceeded and ended up with the Browning sportster. It is not a super vault, but in my neighborhood where everyone knows each other, a thief is not going to have a lot of time before someone starts wondering what it going on at my house. I like the Browning very much and really should not have waited so long to properly secure my firearms. I hope this helps anyone else who might be looking. There are a lot of choices, and many good choices, but secure your weapons! Don't be like me and wait for years to get smart!
