When we left off ages and ages ago (sorry, work has been kinda-sorta busy), i was promising to talk about gun safes. Because "proper gun storage" means a little more than hiding them under your bed. :) By which i mean MY bed.
So. Gun safes are like anything else--you can pick any size, any color (within reason; i canNOT find a picture of a pink one), any flavor, and someone somewhere will sell it to you. They are also one of those things where you DEFINITELY get what you pay for. You can spend thousands (literally) on the great big practically-walk-in super heavy-duty fireproof fancypants safes or you can spend $65 on the cheap crap tin cabinet from Wal-Mart that basically has a cam-lock and is SO break-innable that me and my trusty crowbar could have all your stuff vacated in like 16 seconds. That being said, a cheap crap tin cabinet is better than nothing. Most gun safes will accomplish their intended purposes for the most part:
1) keep thieving hands off your weapons
2) keep children's sticky little grubby gross boogery hands off your weapons
What is more difficult for the safe to accomplish, and ultimately more expensive, is to keep your weapons safe from fire. This makes a HUGE difference in price so it is important to figure out if it is something you require, or if you maybe just don't like your guns all that much and don't really mind if they melt. The cool thing about fire-resistant safes--ALL your important (non-living) stuff can go in there and be protected in the event of an emergency. Birth certificates, passports, car/truck/trailer titles, horse paperwork, grandma's chocolate chip cookie recipe, whatever. So that makes some level of fire-proofiness worth having, at least in my mind. Everyone thinks that having your house burn down for whatever reason is something that happens to "someone else." That's not very realistic. NO ONE expects bad things to happen, until they do. You are definitely best off being prepared for possible unpleasantness. Here is a link to a good article on fire ratings.
Anyways. Gun safes come in basically two approximate shapes--tall enough for rifles/shotguns (usually with shelving for handguns), and smallish square ones for handgun only. There is an obvious price difference on the sizes. What you purchase depends on you. Do you only own handguns? Are you never ever ever going to own a rifle or a shotgun? I can't imagine that, but then again i am CWAZY for clay pigeons, so i am not the best judge. It comes down to personal preference and affordability and the choice is yours.
Oh yeah, there is a third basic shape--long gun, horizontal. Some manufacturers make safes that replace the box-spring of your bed, or that fit nicely into the bed of your truck/SUV. However they might as well just make them shaped like dollar signs because they are not very affordable for the average Serena.
Safes come with lots of different locking mechanisms, also. Some have electronic keypads, some have a dial, some are keyed, some are a combination of these. Again, personal preference.
Make sure that, if you ARE in the market for a safe, you check eBay. They have quite a few varieties and some of the companies will even ship them. Make sure you know what "shipping" entails--some companies will set it up in your house, some will only get it inside your house, and some (most) will just leave it curbside. And it should go without saying, but safes are hella hella heavy. Quality ones especially, like in the 400-800 lb range for a "normal" sized one (20 guns or less).
I am NOT an expert on gun safes by any means, so definitely do more homework than just this post.
Oh, and a parting thought.My parents had a pistol when we were growing up. They had rifles too but the rifles were always hidden, (although in actuality, nothing is "hidden" from a child, but we weren't twits enough to go looking for them). My dad kept the pistol, a .22 caliber Ruger Single Six, in a drawer in his nightstand. He thoughtfully installed a cam-lock on the wooden drawer, which any thief with an ounce of motivation could have ripped off of there, but admittedly the pawn-shop payoff for a Ruger Single Six (Possibly The World's Most Common Revolver!!) isn't that great. He NOT-so-thoughtfully stored the key for that drawer IN THE DRAWER UNDERNEATH IT. Now, I was not an idiot during my teen years. I mean, I was, we all were, but i wasn't enough of an idiot to ever get the gun out and play with it to impress my friends, having no idea if it was loaded or not. My SIBLINGS (and you know who you are) weren't blessed with the same amount of foresight. I work in public relations now, and we in the bizness call something like that an "eventual statistic." Works like this: If you have a ton of unsafe sex, eventually you are going to wake up with a disease. If you play with a loaded gun, eventually someone is going to get accidentally shot. Stuff like this happens ALL the TIME and it is a HUGE reason why people who are anti-gun think that all people are too dumb and irresponsible to own any firearms. Nothing bad happened to my family or their friends, but how easy would it have been? Safe and proper firearms storage is NOT SOMETHING THAT YOU SHOULD HALF-ASS. PERIOD. Seriously. Address safe and proper gun storage using your entire ass.
