Moving to Austin area

[ShrinkMD]

Hi everyone,

I am possibly moving into the Austin area from out of state, and I am concerned about how I could store my firearms, ammo, and reloading components prior to moving into a new home. Most likely I would be in some sort of relo housing for a few months. Can anyone recommend facilities or people to contact for appropriate, secure storage until they can get moved to their new home?

Thanks for any info!

[VMI77]

If you have a gun safe you could look at an air conditioned storage unit.....I wouldn't want anyone to see me bringing it in or out. I've always kept my guns with me when I moved or was between locations but there's risk involved with that too. I don't know enough about your particular circumstances to recommend anything specific.

While I like Austin I don't think I could do Austin traffic every day, so I'd want to live close to where I worked. If say, I worked downtown, I'd want a place downtown. In my case that would be too expensive and that keeps me out of the Austin area for employment. Living somewhere like Lockhart --depends on where you'd be working. That might not be too bad if your work is somewhere south, off, or close to 183. I come into Austin this way for meetings and it keeps me off of I 35. I'd definitely want to locate somewhere that kept me from having to use I 35 or any of the other traffic snarls coming and going.

[cb1000rider]

An Austin friend with a gun safe.. :-)

[ELB]

If you have a gun safe you could look at an air conditioned storage unit......

I manage a storage facility (not near Austin tho), and I have seen a gun safe or two hauled in and out of our climate controlled units. There might be better choices but I don't know what they are or I would tell you. I can point out a couple things about storage facilities tho:

- I would suspect pretty much all storage facility leases explicitly release the facility from any liability for anything that happens to the contents of a storage unit. You will need to make sure you have your own insurance. Homeowners and renter's policies often cover storage units, but you would need to make sure that yours does, and that it covers firearms. Also check to see how big a deductible you would have to pay. Sometimes the deductible is 1% of the overall policy, so if you have $100k policy, your deductible is $1000. Storage facilities often have insurance available if you don't have other insurance. Or even if you do, insurance targeted at storage units often has no deductible (at least the one we use does not).

- Climate control facilities heat in the winter and cool in the summer, but the lease likely says they don't guarantee a specific temperature, just the they will try to keep the temp between a lower and upper bound, say 55-85 degrees F. The A/C will help with humidity, and a well designed climate controlled facility will have separate outside entrances, with the storage unit entrances opening onto an inner hallway. That makes the place much cleaner, and much more bug/rodent-free. Some older places have taken regular ambient drive-up storage units and stuck air conditioners on them, then advertised "climate control", but I wouldn't go for that.

- I would go with a facility that has fences in good repair, gates that are locked all the time except when passing through, lots of night lights in good repair, and security cameras. I would not go with any storage facility where you can walk right off the street up to a storage unit door. If the manager lives onsite, all the better. Also make sure the place in general is in good repair, well paved, fresh paint, that's probably an indicator that all the security items are maintained as well (i.e. the management is not cutting maintenance corners to save $$).

- Choosing a nicer well maintained facility will probably be more expensive, but those features need to be paid for, and it has another benefit as well-- your neighboring tenants will be paying those prices as well, which means usually means they are not right on the edge of financial disaster, and probably less likely to think burgling a storage unit is a good idea.

- I definitely would put a safe of some type, even if only a Residential Security Container, inside the storage unit. If all the cameras and such fail to deter someone, that storage unit door is not Fort Knox. And yes I would try to put it in there when things are quiet. Ask the manager when that is. You could even ask the manager if you could move in after-hours, if access is restricted to certain times.

- The lease will probably also forbid storing gun powder, ammunition, and pretty much anything else that is more flammable than a piece of furniture. I'm sure people sneak stuff in, but if something bad happens and it is discovered you had prohibited items in there, your insurance claim may have a problem. So not sure what to recommend to you about that. If you have a lot of factory ammo, maybe you can sell it and order new to be delivered to your new home when you get it. As for powder and primers and all that -- maybe same thing, sell it and buy new here. If you are in rented housing, I suspect the lease for that might not be ammo friendly either.

I've seen a lot new, well maintained storage facilities with climate control in the Round Rock area (was going there a lot lately), I'm sure there are others all around the city.

Best wishes and welcome to Texas.

(btw: "ShrinkMD"? Are you a psychiatrist?)

[LDB415]

I wish I could offer you a solution. Good luck figuring it out and condolences on moving to Austin, the far left blight on Texas.

[Abraham]

Perhaps call some of the Austin gun stores as they may have storage or know of safe storage they could advise you on.

Yes, Austin has great music and food, but it's also an isolated pocket of extreme leftism in Texas.

[doncom]

A good answer probably requires a bit more info...you say you're moving to the Austin area. Do you know exactly where? What type of temporary housing? Many Austin apts might prohibit weapons, but most of the rural areas probably will not which would allow you to keep your guns with you. Good luck and take a look at the Marble Falls area.

[Running Arrow Bill]

Hi everyone,

I am possibly moving into the Austin area from out of state, and I am concerned about how I could store my firearms, ammo, and reloading components prior to moving into a new home. Most likely I would be in some sort of relo housing for a few months. Can anyone recommend facilities or people to contact for appropriate, secure storage until they can get moved to their new home?

Thanks for any info!

Locate in a neighboring town... Austin, DFW, Houston have disasterous traffic, anti-gun, expensive, etc. Austin, IMO, is ultra-liberal la-la land...

[SewTexas]

you don't have to go all the way to Marble Falls, take a look at Round Rock or Georgetown, you should be happy there. I'm actually in the process of moving up to Round Rock. We were hoping to move back to Georgetown, left about 7 years ago, but can't quite swing it right now, might be able to in a few years when we can downsize a bit further.

[tms119]

Howdy I moved to Austin from Illinois about 11 months ago. Pflugerville, round rock and Georgetown you'd be fine in, even cedar park. The key is to live in Williamson County and you can still be 25 min from downtown Austin.

[TomsTXCHL]

Congrats on your move ShrinkMD. Austin certainly needs all the mental health professionals it can get!



Seriously, you will like it and you DON'T have to live in the city unless that's your thing.

[ShrinkMD]

Thanks go all the advice. As I've heard, the great thing about Austin is you can drive 20 minutes in any direction and be back in Texas!