Where do you store your guns? When we talk about gun control and common sense, I think it makes sense to talk about storage. It should be possible to completely eliminate firearms accidents caused by small children finding guns. It should be possible to minimize the flow of stolen guns onto the criminal black market. There are a lot of different perspectives on storage, and many of them are valid. We don’t all live in the same situation.
Easy access
It’s 3am. Glass breaks, and you wake up. You hear heavy footfalls on your hallway floor. You reach for your trusty revolver on your nightstand. If you live in a dangerous neighborhood, or in an old western film, you might want to consider locking a few doors and windows, maybe adding an alarm, even a tripwire, to at least buy yourself enough time to unlock the pistol safe next to your bed.
Scenario two: with ninja-like stealth, the burglar quietly picks your lock and pads noiselessly down your hall. In the moonlight coming through the window he sees the glint of nickel-plating on your nightstand. While you snore he grabs the revolver and leaves. By morning he’s fenced it to a gang member who uses it to hold up a convenience store where he gets nervous and shoots the clerk, killing him.
Let’s assume that you live alone. You don’t have children. You don’t know any children. You can reasonably assume that no-one whom you have allowed into your home will act irresponsibly with the loaded gun on your nightstand. You sleep lightly and when you wake, you immediately strap on your gun. It’s the only gun you own. You might be a candidate for not locking up your gun. Make sure you dry the barrel out after your shower. For most of us, however, it is essential to have a very safe place to secure guns when they are not in use.
What are tools?
Often I read or hear descriptions of locks or safes as if they were impermeable. I have heard guns with barrel locks described as no more than ‘scrap metal’ and heard people speak of cheap sheet metal lockboxes as if they’re impossible to crack. For perspective, consider the Hatton Garden robbery in which a team of thieves used an industrial drill to make a person sized hole through several feet of concrete and steel in order to enter a vault filled with diamonds and gold. Or this story, in which a 400lb gun safe is stolen from a home. Or this video in which a three-year-old breaks into several popular models of gun safes by exploiting flaws in the designs. There are basic tools which can be found at any home center or hardware store for less than $200 which can get through nearly anything. An angle grinder with a cutting wheel will slice through just about any padlock in seconds. A Sawzall reciprocating saw with a hacksaw blade or a drill with a good bit will also make short work of most metal boxes. Apparently a Hilti DD350 Diamond Coring Drill, sold for about $5000, will drill through a bank vault set in thick concrete walls. Then there are cutting torches, cold chisels, bolt cutters, air hammers, and band saws. If someone wants what you have badly enough, they will probably be able to get it.
What does security really mean?
Security is always a compromise. On one hand, you don’t want anyone else to get your stuff. On the other, you would like to be able to get your stuff. On one end of the spectrum, you leave your stuff on the front lawn with a ‘Free’ sign. On the other end, you cast your stuff in a ten foot cube of reinforced concrete, bury it in the desert miles from any road, place a hundred ton granite slab on top, then surround it with land mines and a population of diamondback rattlesnakes. You have to take into account just how much trouble someone might take to steal your stuff and you also have to account for how easily you want to be able to get your stuff. These are separate considerations.
Is your stuff a target? Risk, Effort and Reward.
A criminal’s decision to target your house is based on a calculation of risk, effort and reward. Someone once smashed my car window and took a GPS. The reward was low. Maybe it was worth $50, probably less. But the effort was low, and the risk was low because the car was on the street where the thief could have run in any direction if seen. The Hatton Garden robbery was very high effort. The thieves spent thousands on tools and it took multiple people many hours. The risk was very high too. They were in a confined space where they would have been trapped if police had come. But the reward was tens of millions of dollars in hard-to-trace gems and precious metals.
Reward
Does anyone know that you have guns or other valuables in your house? Are you a uniformed police officer or do you have gun related stickers on your house or car? If a passerby looks in your window, do they see electronics, art, weapons or anything else of value? Do you live in a wealthy area? What are crime rates like in your neighborhood? Do you drive an expensive car? From the perspective of a thief, what are the signs that your house might contain cash, jewelry, guns or anything else that can be easily sold? What can you do to obscure those signs? If you recognize that your home suggests a high reward, consider increasing the effort and risk involved in robbing it.
Risk
There are various ways that you can increase the risk associated with robbing your home. An alarm system is the most obvious. Outdoor lighting, especially with motion sensors, can make it hard to discreetly climb through a window. Anything that makes it more likely that a burglar will be caught or hurt increases risk. Be careful though, anything that makes it likely that an intruder will get hurt can actually create liability for you. The easiest way to increase risk is to increase effort. The longer a thief has to spend in your house, the greater are the chances that he will be seen and caught. Likewise, the harder it is to transport an item, the higher the risk. You can run down the street with a revolver in your pocket much more easily than carrying a 100 lb safe. You can cut through a metal safe, but that takes time and makes noise, increasing risk.
Effort
What can you do to make it take longer, require more tools, make more noise, and use more physical strength to take your guns? Thieves are lazy. That’s probably why they are thieves. Less lazy people might get jobs and have no good reason to risk jail time by stealing your stuff. Years ago, someone climbed in the window of my ground floor apartment and took an old notebook computer and a jar of change. They left thousands of dollars of electronics. Why? I can only speculate that they either got spooked and left too quickly, or they only wanted what they could easily carry away. Simply making things hard to find increases effort. If you have a small lockbox or pistol safe, simply screwing it to a piece of furniture or a wall or floor can dramatically increase the effort involved in stealing it.
Think about security outside of your home too. Do you keep your gun in a purse? In your car? Carried in a way that is vulnerable to pickpockets? One risk inherent in open-carry is that, while you may feel pretty tough, you become a target for any thief who wants a gun. There is strength in discretion. Any public display that you own guns increases the potential reward for a thief. This includes stickers on your home or car, gun themed hats and clothing, public open-carry, your Facebook profile shot with your tricked out AR-15, and the sign in your yard that says, “This house is protected by Smith & Wesson”.
If you choose to own firearms, you assume responsibility for keeping them out of the wrong hands. Your stolen gun can enable murder, robbery, home invasion and other violent crimes. Keep it safe!