what you should know before buying a handgun safe

The best handgun safes I've examined to date are listed on my Recommended Safes page. Having looked at every major brand of electronic handgun safe, I am reluctant to recommend safes with electronics that do not rely on an entrypad and swing-bolt arrangement, like the Sargent & Greenleaf and Securam locks. An example of this type of lock is intalled on the Rhino Metals Longhorn Strongbox, LSB1818. Safes with this type of lock still have mechanically operated bolts that are drawn back manually, but the bolt assembly is held locked by a separate electronic bolt operated from the outside by an entrypad. As you look through this website, try to keep in mind that this site and the accompanying YouTube and Vimeo channels are not consumer reporting services, and I don’t represent myself as having qualifications to test products for consumers. This research began as investigative journalism. I established these online resources to share the results of that investigation, and I continue to do follow up research and add to the database.

No, I don’t supply replacement keys. Nor do I supply parts, or perform repair services on safes, or diagnose problems with safes by email. If you’re having problems with a safe, the best thing to do is contact the manufacturer, if the company is still in business, and ask if service is available for the product. If the safe is out of production or you can no longer get parts or service for it, it's time to consider buying a new safe.

I don’t recommend handgun safes with biometric technology. In examining these devices, I’ve found that safes with fingerprint readers are unlikely to be any more secure than safes equipped with simple keypads. More importantly, people often refuse to accept a basic fact of aging, that as we age the skin of our hands starts to dry and our fingerprints become harder for a biometric scanner to "see." Once you've reached the age of 50, this will be an ongoing issue when using a fingerprint scanner. I discuss biometric safes on the Handgun safe design page of this site, and I go into the design problems that undermine safes with biometrics on the Findings & discussion page.

I have not evaluated enough gun-storage devices for cars to make any recommendations. The few handgun safes I've seen that are also marketed for securing guns in cars don't impress me. As for leaving a gun in an unattended car, unless your car will be parked in a secure location I wouldn't recommend leaving a gun inside it.

If you’re in the market for a full-sized safe, I recommend reading through the Gun Safe Reviews Guy website before making any purchases. Jaime Capra has condensed a tremendous amount of information on the manufacture of large safes, and he’s taken the time to demystify the arcane language of UL standards. He’s also done a fair amount of myth busting with regard to the claims that manufacturers make about their products.

No, there are no top-secret access codes that will open any random safe. These emails always come from individuals who fail to identify the brand of safe in question. This tells me they are trying to break into safes they don't own. Either that, or they are cops or federal agents clumsily attempting to entrap someone they suspect is a criminal hacker.

Rating systems are misleading. They give the impression that the positive characteristics of a device may somehow offset other more serious design issues. However, starting in 2018, I began selectively approving handgun safes, which you can find on my Recommended Safes page. I recommend safes that rely on mechanical pushbutton locks or high-quality electronic locks made by companies like Sargent & Greenleaf. My "stamp of approval" is not recognized by any governmental office or consumer product testing agency.

Nearly all the safes I’ve examined are made in China. So, no, I haven’t bothered contacting the Chinese manufacturers. Nor do I bother contacting the U.S. importers. These companies do not evaluate products they import for how secure the products are. As I discuss in the Firearm Safety Devices section, U.S. importers rely on California Department of Justice (DOJ) approval to tell them whether their products are appropriate for storing firearms. But as I also explain, the process by which California’s DOJ approves these products is grossly inadequate. If the system worked, I wouldn’t have been able to compromise the safes I’ve broken into.

I get regular emails from people trying to break into the gun-safety industry. Unfortunately, these aspiring inventors routinely fail to research the industry. My advice is this: If you plan to invent security devices, you must study the field of security before diving into becoming an inventor. If you’re interested in firearm safety technology, you also need to research the industry of firearm safety products. Begin by reading the contents of this website carefully. Plan on allowing your design process to be guided by standards. This will position you to seek standards certification at a later date, which can only be accomplished by designing to standards. Finally, if you’ve determined that you do have an innovative idea for a device, writing an email to HandgunSafeResearch.com will not protect your intellectual-property rights or provide you any form of patent. You will have to go through the patent process. As for promoting products, the gun safety devices I currently endorse are listed at the top of this FAQ section.

No, a gun owner should never trust the security of a firearm to a gun lock exclusively. Most of the gun locks included with firearms sales are imported products from China or Taiwan. The locks are of poor quality, and as I explain in the Firearm Safety Devices section California's program for testing gun locks is unable to identify the worst products before they go into circulation.