Locking gun in car

[tytl]

Well, I have been thinking about ways to lock your gun in the car. I travel back and fourth between cities, and have a need to keep the gun locked in the car while it is parked in an airport parking lot. I have bought the portable gun safe that has the steel cable, but after actually getting the product, still looks like it would be not to difficult to get into.

Does anyone simply use a chain bolted to the floor board, and then simply put a big padlock through the trigger guard and chain? I know this could be hard on the gun, but I don't think even bolt cutters would be able to cut the trigger guard. Worse they could do is take it apart and get half of your gun.

Thoughts and opinions?

Thanks,
tytl

[Liberty]

Depends on the guns, Mine are either plastic or aluminum Don't think most types of cutters would have too tough a time.

[ShootingStar]

Wrap some plastic tape around the chain or cable to keep if from scratching the gun. If it's a semi-auto, lock the slid back and thread the cable through the ejection port down into the mag well. This would pretty much force them to either cut the cable, pick the lock, or destroy the gun.

Maybe a couple of cable trigger locks would work if they are long enough. I would use two independantly so it would take them more time to get them both off. Time is the enemy of the thief as he is more likely to be caught as time increases.
-ss

[NcongruNt]

I have a GunVault pistol case bolted underneath my seat. I consider it relatively secure against smash and grab robberies, and its door mechanism is such that it would require something very stiff, very strong, and very thin to pry open. As it is bolted securely to the seat mount, it can't simply be cut out of its secured position the way that something cabled to the car can be.

Here's what they look like, and also a picture of the safe mounted in my van:





Mine is mounted with the buttons down, so all I have to do to access it is reach underneath the seat and enter the code.

[propellerhead]

Wouldn't a gun safe in a car even highlight the fact that you have something of value? If someone has the time and equipment to break into your car, my thinking is they'll take that crowbar to anything just to get that gun safe.

My choice is to hide the gun really well. Just imagine if you had a hidden zipper behind the passenger seat and you can stuff a pistol in there. If someone breaks into your car to steal the stereo, they won't even know of the pistol.

[stevie_d_64]

Wouldn't a gun safe in a car even highlight the fact that you have something of value? If someone has the time and equipment to break into your car, my thinking is they'll take that crowbar to anything just to get that gun safe.

My choice is to hide the gun really well. Just imagine if you had a hidden zipper behind the passenger seat and you can stuff a pistol in there. If someone breaks into your car to steal the stereo, they won't even know of the pistol.

Yeah, I've got a video (3 minutes or so) of a guy taping himself breaking into cars in a parking lot...Not much is hidden very well from this smash and grabber...I doubt he would spend any time on any safe "system" we've been talking about on this forum for as long as I can remember...

I will not post the link to the video as it contains extreme foul language and is in violation of the forum rules...

I will tell you how to find it, as that would be your choice to do so...

Go to YouTube and type in the search line "car thief" and it shoud pop up in the first two or three videos...

Watch how fast he works, and how little effort it is to get into the vehicles...Its not rocket science, but it does illustrate how you possibly could slow someone like this up with a little something extra...

Also, this is not to go off tangent about what you would do if you saw someone like this breaking into cars in this fashion...

Obviously we'd be good witnesses, right!

[NcongruNt]

Wouldn't a gun safe in a car even highlight the fact that you have something of value? If someone has the time and equipment to break into your car, my thinking is they'll take that crowbar to anything just to get that gun safe.

My choice is to hide the gun really well. Just imagine if you had a hidden zipper behind the passenger seat and you can stuff a pistol in there. If someone breaks into your car to steal the stereo, they won't even know of the pistol.

I respectfully disagree. Having my van broken into earlier this year, I got to see first hand what they went through. There's no good hiding place in a vehicle when it comes to thieves. They know where all of the places to hide things are. In my particular case, I had some small electronics and firearms in my vehicle. The thieves went through everything in the van, including my ammo boxes and piles of junk. They tore open every envelope (and there were lots of them), pulled everything from underneath the seats, opened empty pizza boxes, took beer from the storage fridge in back, pulled ammo from small boxes, etc. What they did not take was the ammo and the guns (locked in cases). It was pretty obvious what the gun cases were, and they even left the easily carried pistol case, which was locked. Had those cases been unlocked, I'm betting the guns would have been taken. Most of the car break-ins around here seem to follow the pattern of smash and grab. They take things that are easily removable - car stereos, small electronics, clothes, shoes, etc. They are racing against the clock, and if something is difficult to get into, they're not going to bother the extra time it takes and get caught. They only took my stereo and some small electronics in the end. My suspicion is that once they reached the back of the van where the guns and ammo were located, the clock had been ticking a while, and realizing the sheer amount of firepower sitting in the back of that van, they thought it better to make a quick exit rather than risk an encounter with an angry and armed owner.

With my GunVault, I can tell you that with its positioning, there's no way to get a crowbar into position to defeat it. What's more, the construction of the box simply doesn't leave room for prying with a crowbar. The best they could possibly do is attempt to pry the box off the seat, and the number of bolts and amount steel that keeps it there would make that a long task to undertake. Is it theft-proof? No. What it does is make it difficult enough to defeat that there is too much effort, time, and risk of discovery involved, deterring the average thief from trying. This is why it has an advantage over the cabled devices, in my opinion. A cable can be quickly cut with a hand held set of clippers or tin snips and the locking mechanism on the box defeated in the comfort of the thief's home. Still, I find the cabled boxes a better deterrent than hiding your gun and hoping the thief doesn't find it. The thief would still need appropriate cutting tools to remove it.

[propellerhead]

My car has no room under the front seats for any type of vault. I bet most compact to subcompact cars don't either. I do have some places to hide a pistol that is not a normal storage area. It takes partial disassembly of the back seats but I can do it in under a minute now.

[NcongruNt]

My car has no room under the front seats for any type of vault. I bet most compact to subcompact cars don't either. I do have some places to hide a pistol that is not a normal storage area. It takes partial disassembly of the back seats but I can do it in under a minute now.

Right. You have to go with whatever works for your vehicle. Any kind of locked box beats nothing at all, IMO.

[stevie_d_64]

My car has no room under the front seats for any type of vault. I bet most compact to subcompact cars don't either. I do have some places to hide a pistol that is not a normal storage area. It takes partial disassembly of the back seats but I can do it in under a minute now.

Right. You have to go with whatever works for your vehicle. Any kind of locked box beats nothing at all, IMO.

[KinnyLee]

I wouldn't mind a safe in my car, but fitting something even small in a 2 door convertible is a big challenge.

[tytl]

Great comments, thanks all. I may still consider drilling a hole in the corner of the Center of Mass safe and put a big padlock through it, as well as using a bicycle lock chain to wrap around the seat frame instead of the supplied thin steel cable.
tytl

[boomerang]

Also, this is not to go off tangent about what you would do if you saw someone like this breaking into cars in this fashion...

I don't know what I would do but if someone decided to use a deer rifle to solve the problem, I have to vote not guilty if I'm on the jury. It's nighttime. Breaking the windows is criminal mischief at least.