FAQ Safety devices: Locks, safes and laws

[Librarian]

Librarian submitted a new resource:

Safety devices: Locks, safes and laws - CA and Fedlaw require 'safety devices' so FFLs can deliver guns

Summary

▪ Federal law requires a safety device with any handgun purchase through an FFL

▪ California law requires a safety device with every gun sold through an FFL

▪ California has a Roster of Firearms Safety Devices

▪ "Safe" is a generic term, with a wide variety of types


Laws

Federal law at 18 USC 922 (z) requires a safety device for handguns

(z) Secure Gun Storage or Safety Device.-
(1) In general.-
Except as provided under...

Read more about this resource...

 

[Librarian]

So, having said all that, what do -I- have?

My first safe was an AMSEC TL-15 gun safe; empty, it weighed 3,000 lb, and back when I bought it I paid about $1/lb. My wife actively went along with that; we keep other small but valuable things in our safe.

Sold that one when we moved to OR; not only would the movers not take guns or ammo - we brought those up separately - but the shipping cost would have been around 50 cents/lb.

Replaced it with a new AMSEC TL-30X6, 4,500 lb empty and bigger than my first. This one was just under $3/lb, delivered from Portland and placed by three guys.

Both times I bought, I got about 20% off list price, just for asking, so there's some room to negotiate on those higher end products.

 

[couragewolf]

One valuable thing to discuss is ways normal people can greatly improve the security of their safe.

1: obscuring it's location by framing it into furniture or a secluded inconvenient space to manuever pry tools.

2: Framing around the joints pry tools would need to be leveraged against.

3: Silicon caulk around joints and securely bolting the safe either into the frame of your home or ideally into concrete.

Doing these 3 things makes stealing an entire safe to pick apart somewhere else go from a 20 minute job to a multiple hours job which is enough under the MAJORITY of circumstances.

Another strategy is to distribute your valuables across multiple smaller safes instead of centralizing them all in one large safe and using all of those methods previously described. It's possible to make a safe damn near impossible to find without prior knowledge if we're being really clever about it.