If you are an avid hunter or enjoy going shooting for sport, you likely have quite a few handguns and other firearms that you’ll need to keep stored in your home. However, storing these items isn’t as easy as storing other recreational equipment. To keep yourself and others safe, you need to be sure that your home is equipped with safe firearm storage.
To help you implement this within your own property, here are three tips for building safe firearm storage in your home.
Think Separate Locations
The very first thing you should consider when storing firearms in your home is that you shouldn’t keep all of your equipment stored in the same area. For safety purposes, you’ll want to keep some things in a separate location.
According to ProjectSafeChild.org, you should, at the very least, keep your ammunition stored in a locked area that’s away from the actual guns that that ammunition is for. This way, if someone were to gain access to one of your storage areas, they still wouldn’t be able to use your firearms because they either wouldn’t have the weapons or wouldn’t have the ammunition. So with this in mind, you should find two areas in your home where you can put together some kind of safe firearm storage. This might mean having to build out an area that you hadn’t originally planned on using as firearm storage.
Don’t Make Storage Visible
Although you might like the idea of keeping your guns in a gun case that you display for yourself or others to enjoy, Hunter-Ed.com warns against this.
When your firearms are stored in an area that’s easy to see or access, this can give people the idea that they can or should try to gain access to them, especially if someone outside of your home could see your firearms through the window. So to best keep them safe, it’s ideal to put them somewhere where they won’t be easily seen.
Consider Built-In Gun Cases Or Safes
With a lot of gun storage, it could be easy for someone to carry away your firearms or ammunition if they aren’t stored in something big enough or heavy enough.
Because of this, B. Gil Horman, a contributor to NRA Family, recommends that you use larger gun cases or strong boxes. Or, as another option, you may want to consider having your gun storage built into your home in one way or another. This could include having a cabinet meant for your firearms built into other built-ins that you may have in your house. This way, no one can take them out of your home while they’re still in their storage container.
If you’re needing to come up with some better options for gun storage in your home, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you do so.