Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Gun Safe Security - Are Your Guns As Safe As You Think?

By Frank Froggatt

Having a gun safe is pretty important if you are a gun owner. You also need to make sure that the safe is easily accessible for you but impossible for other unwanted people to access.

Safes are made from tough, heavy gauge steel, typically half an inch thick. Sometimes they are manufactured with 2 pieces of hardened steel with ball bearings between them.The ball bearings make drilling through the safe incredibly hard to say the least.

For any safe, the lock and the door are by far the weakest points. When you lock the safe it should activate at least 4 locking bolts on all sides that are either made out of titanium or at the minimum hardened steel. The door hinges do not pose a weakness as they are all internal.

They are built normally with on of three types of locks, and they are either a key lock, a combination, or a fingerprint activation. You will find that some security features of safes incorporate ideas like time delays and multiple combinations of mechanisms.

A keyed lock is probably your least secure option as anyone who knows what they are doing can open even the most difficult of them. An expert can find a combination code on a rotary combination dials fairly easily. A keypad combination is the best if you have a combination lock. A thief cannot listen to a digital keypad for the sound of the tumblers to move as there are none.

Remember to always be sure that the keypad remains clean. Keys that are dirty or different in appearance from each other can give a thief clues as to the numbers. When you select your combination, you need to make sure that it does not resemble or have any relation to you phone numbers, birth dates or any other commonly known info that can be guessed upon successfully.

The best option is a fingerprint-operated lock. Then you can have absolute confidence that while your fingers are attached to your body that nobody will be able to open your safe without your knowledge.

A combination of the keypad and the fingerprint lock offers the best security for your valuables, unless you can get a fingerprint lock with multiple person memory.

Fire protection is usually built into home safes, with layers of insulating material and expanding door seals that exclude oxygen and prevent combustion of the safe contents.

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