Spiderman fans can tell you that with great power comes great responsibility. The right to keep and bear arms comes with an important responsibility: to safely store your firearms when they are not in use.
Too many tales of tragedy hit the news every year. Sometimes a child finds an unsecured gun and hurts or kills himself or a sibling. Other times, a police officer or other citizen is killed with a stolen pistol. While we cannot control the actions of other people, we can take simple and prudent steps to secure our guns when they are outside of our immediate control.
Here are a few suggestions:
Wear your defensive firearm – The best security of a firearm is when it is under your complete control. A pistol secured in a quality holster riding on your belt is not going to fall into a child’s hands. The obvious additional benefit is the gun is ready in the event of a home invasion or other deadly force emergency.
Gun safe – A big, locked steel box bolted to the foundation works very well to deter both criminals and curious children. No safe will offer 100% resistance to a thief with plenty of time, tools and determination. However, even a common safe from your local sporting goods store will deter the vast majority of burglars.
Lock box – There are a number of ready access lock boxes on the market that will allow you to secure the gun against children while still allowing you speedy access to the pistol contained within. For a gun you keep by the bedside, this is a very good way to safely store it. A neighbor’s kid wandering into your bedroom won’t be able to get in, but with a quick biometric or RFID scan, you are able to rapidly access your gun if someone comes into your home to do you harm.
A lock box will slow a thief, but not prevent him from taking the whole box to crack open at another location where he is unlikely to be discovered.
Trigger locks, cable locks – New guns all come with some kind of locking device, usually a trigger lock or cable lock. Some guns have an internal lock that disables them. These are good for keeping a child from hurting himself, but do not prevent theft or use after theft. A pistol or rifle secured with a trigger lock can still be carried from your home to a place where the criminal has plent of time to remove or bypass the lock.
My personal recommendation is to have a large safe that is properly secured to the studs and/or foundation. This is where you store all guns not being carried when you are away from the home. When you are home, the use of a lock box is a good idea for any staged guns. You primary defensive firearm should be on your person at all times: both at home and when out and about.