Safe storage laws are the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. Once the government mandates how you store your gun, unannounced home inspections are on the cards. As they are in the UK right now. Of course, you should practice safe storage, regardless. Here are the three best ways to do so . . .
1. Train your family in the Four Rules of Gun Safety
The safest storage method for any gun is between your ears. And the ears of everyone in your family. Everyone who may have access to firearms should understand and respect The Four Rules of Gun Safety.
Any storage device be breached, including a tank-like gun safe. All an interloper has to do is either A) use force or B) use the combination. If you think your children are too weak or dumb or unmotivated to use either entry technique, you’re only right until you’re not.
It must also be said: sh*t happens. It’s entirely possible that you’ll leave your safe open by mistake. Or forget to put your gun away. A guest may not safely store their gun in your house.
The only way to increase the odds of preventing a potential storage-related tragedy is to make sure your family members know how to safely handle guns. That’s it.
2. Home carry
God knows I’ve banged this drum over the last seven years — for personal defense. Again, there’s no need to turn a home defense into a foot race. In terms of gun safety, home carry is also a capital idea.
Which gun do you handle most? Your carry gun. If that gun is on your person, you are in control of it. What else needs saying? That you can’t carry all your guns around the home, or even one gun all the time. So you need . . .
3. A “proper” safe
Plenty of people keep a shoebox-sized finger safe by their bed and/or small safes placed strategically around the house. IF family members are gun safe, OK, sure, why not? As long as you understand that it takes seconds to prise open a small gun safe.
But every gun owner with a long gun and/or multiple handguns needs a “proper” safe. By that I mean a large beast — let’s face it guns multiply like rabbits — that’s a bitch to open without the combo.
There as many big ass safes on the market as there are gun guys warning you just how easy it is to defeat them. They’re not wrong; research your safe purchase(s) thoroughly using Al Gore’s Internet.
I advise against bio-metric locks. The hang time is still pretty significant and the bloody fingerprint problem is a thing. Assuming, that is, that you might need emergency access to your firearms. Which you might.