Where Should You Keep Your Gun Safe?

There is a great responsibility associated not only with owning a firearm, but with storing it, and the general consensus is that a gun safe is the best place to keep a gun, or multiple guns. However, while most Americans keep their guns protected in a gun safe, many don’t properly evaluate where the safe itself should be kept in their home, and often place it where it might be compromised.

So, where should you keep your gun safe for maximum protection? Let’s look at why and how you should hide your gun safe:

The advantages of keeping your gun safe out of sight

You might think that once your gun is secured in a safe, that’s it, problem solved. Your gun can’t be reached by anyone without the key or code, and this includes children, visitors to the home or criminals seeking to steal the weapon and sell it, or who might use it to commit other crimes within your home or elsewhere. However, while it’s true to say that a gun safe is the most secure place to store guns, no safe is 100% impenetrable should someone get lucky with cracking the code, or a particularly determined burglar manages to force it open. With this in mind, it’s best to conceal your gun safe by keeping it out of plain sight, while ensuring that you can still access it should you need to in an emergency.

Hiding your gun safe in your closet

This is generally thought to be one of the safest places to conceal a gun safe, as while it keeps it out of sight of an intruder, it also enables you to quickly and easily access it should you need to in the middle of the night, which is one of the most common times for an intrusion to occur. Large enough to accommodate a standard gun safe, the average closet also has doors (or a door) that allows the safe to remain hidden at all times.

Hiding a gun safe that isn’t stored in a closet

If you decide not to keep your gun safe in a bedroom closet (maybe you don’t have a closet large enough, or don’t have a closet at all), then you can place your safe in another location and hide it by placing something on or over it, keep it behind a door, or surround it with a shelving unit.

How to decide where to hide your gun safe

This will depend upon several factors, the most important of which concerns accessibility, and how easily you can get to it should you need to in an emergency. You don’t want a criminal to see your gun safe, but your guns are useless if you can’t get to them quickly when you need them.

Fixing your gun safe to a wall

Many gun owners choose to do this, and even if you choose to hide your safe in a closet, it’s still a good idea to secure it to the floor of the closet so that it can’t be removed.