Before you come after me as some sort of traitor to the cause, you should know me well enough by now that I shouldn’t have to list my pro-gun bona fides.
The fact is, I am the kind of person who will give credit where credit is due.
I was blindsided by this commercial. The YouTube algorithm got me again, and I didn’t know what I was watching until the end.
Here it is:
The only real problem I have with this commercial is that those Sentry Safe XO-55 digital lockboxes are cheap pieces of shit.
I prefer the Liberty Handgun Vault line. I have two myself. I increased the security by anchoring them to studs with 3.5 inch lag bolts. I trust Liberty because they make good full-size gun safes and their handgun vaults are USA made.
I know GunVault has a good reputation, and the internet shows how tough they are. Hornady is new to the gun lockbox market, but their quality seems to be very good too.
(Once again, as an aside, fuck the Lock Picking Lawyer, my kid and the meth head ransacking my place for shit to trade for drugs isn’t running around with specialty lock picking tools.)
But I digress…
I have no argument with the substance of this ad.
Clearly the position of the lockbox by the bed indicates that the dad has a loaded handgun for home protection. Brady isn’t attacking that. They are just saying, keep it locked away from the kids who can find it.
There are plenty of fast access lockboxes that only take a few seconds to open.
If you have a gun, lock it up. Especially if you have kids or kids come over to your place.
The $100 – $200 that a good handgun box costs is worth the cost of not having to burry your child.
When my kids turned 16 I showed them where my pistol safe was hidden in my closet. They both claimed, 5 years apart, that although they knew I carried, they didn’t know where the safe was until then.
So I’m a fan.
MY main gun safe is a Winchester Big Daddy. My bedside safe is a GunVault slide model.
You may be familiar with Harbor Freight, purveyor of very cheap tools and the like, worth what you pay for them. I like them for items where I don’t need high quality.
They sell gun safes. I forgot what they charge for them, $200 perhaps? Not much, anyway. The interesting thing is that they are CAL DOJ approved gun storage containers. Which leads me to wonder just how low the quality standards are in states that mandate state approved storage containers.
In other words, some caution is needed where approvals or certifications is concerned. It’s useful to read just what those labels mean, if anything. (The same goes for fire ratings; don’t just read “60 minutes” but find out what precisely the test procedure is and how it compares with the UL procedure.)
I have 3 problems with that ad.
One, I know that what they’re wanting is to send me to prison if someone breaks into my home, steals one of my guns, and 10 years later someone gets killed with it. It doesn’t matter if it’s locked up or not, if someone was *able* to steal it that means it wasn’t “properly secured” by their definition.
Two, I already have to pay for a stupid gun lock for every new gun I buy…because Brady convinced enough people that mandatory gun locks would solve this same exact problem.
Three, I helped pay for this ad, because it used Ad Council dollars to make it.
CA DOJ gun safe that meets all of the following standards:
Shall be able to fully contain firearms and provide for their secure storage. Shall have a locking system consisting of at minimum a mechanical or electronic combination lock. The mechanical or electronic combination lock utilized by the safe shall have at least 10,000 possible combinations consisting of a minimum three numbers, letters, or symbols. The lock shall be protected by a case hardened (Rc 60+) drill resistant steel plate, or drill resistant material of equivalent strength.
Boltwork shall consist of a minimum of three steel locking bolts of at least 1/2- inch thickness that intrude from the door of the safe into the body of the safe or from the body of the safe into the door of the safe, which are operated by a separate handle and secured by the lock.
A gun safe shall be capable of repeated use. The exterior walls shall be constructed of a minimum 12-gauge thick steel (7/64″ or 0.109″) for a single walled safe, or the sum of the steel walls shall add up to at least 0.100 inches for safes with two walls. Doors shall be constructed of a minimum one layer of 7-gauge steel (3/16″ or 0.1875″) plate reinforced construction or at least two layers of a minimum 12-gauge steel compound construction.
Door hinges shall be protected to prevent the removal of the door. Protective features include, but are not limited to: hinges not exposed to the outside, interlocking door designs, dead bars, jeweler’s lugs and active or inactive locking bolts.
There is no actual physical testing of the safe required, unlike UL RSC approval. It’s not hard to build a shitty gun safe to these standards in China. Especially if it uses interrupted stitch welding (no requirement for full seam weld) and really crappy bolt work.
Those Chinese made safes are junk. I’d rather store my guns in a Home Depot brand Job box with a pair of high strength pad locks than a shitty gun safe.
Yeah, I’d be awfully hesitant to entrust anything more than a cap gun to a safe bought at Harbor Freight. I’ve frequented them on rare occasions when I need a tool ‘just once’ and I know I won’t need it again, so no need for something expensive.
“There is no actual physical testing of the safe required,”
Speaking as a guy who works in physical (mechanical) testing as part of his QA job, this makes me cringe. Not at you, J, but at the idea of selling something without testing it.
All you need to do is look at the Iowa Democratic Party caucuses to see what happens if you don’t test things.
Like a recovering alcoholic, I do my best to never curse, but – pardon my French – F*** it. The mandatory requirement to lock your guns is dangerous b*******. In a real emergency in the middle of the night half asleep trying to unlock the box, load the pistol, get out of the bedroom – – you or your family are already dead.
It takes time to wake up when you are attacked. The confusion. The pumping adrenalin. Skin too dry or too sweaty for fingerprint. Shaking hands to get key into the lock in the dark, and did I drop the key and just kicked it under the bed?The code… Wth is my code?…
And most important : if parents are attacked kids cannot protect themselves.
My elder kids have FIDs. All my kids are proficient with Firearms and are safe around them. But when they need protection the most – – Firearms are locked in the safes far from kids’ bedrooms, because to do otherwise is felony in this GD state.
Children need to be trained. How to cross the road. How to bake pizza. How to drive a car. How to protect themselves.
Locking Firearms away from your kids makes all the Firearm training useless in real emergency.
Now, when there are very little kids or ignorant progeny of hoplophobes visiting, yes, then one needs to take precautions.
And yes, the weapons should not be displayed openly for all the thieves in the world to see. And there should not be any loose lips in the family. It is concealed carry for the house and should be treated as such.
If the NRA put out the same ad the infringers would be all over it in anger. Because the NRA has bad motives.
Brady has bad motives. The ad is still good. Make sure that untrained kids don’t get access to your gun.
I was surprised to learn the a vline safe without a secondary key lock is not CA DoJ compliment. Not enough combinations.
There are days when I wish I had a gun cabinet like my uncle had. 15 beautiful rifles and shotguns on display behind glass doors. A simple lock with the key in the lock. Along with shelves to display his pistols.
I need a another safe. This summer a few items of value followed me home…