[NA] Biometric pistol safe

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Dave Taylor
Throw out some models that work well for a large, SA Glock.
-must open reliably, easily, quickly
-must have plenty of internal space so it is not a struggle to extract pistol
-should have a means of mounting ie internally-accessible screw holes
-silent & no lighting seem like reasonable features
- two+ fingerprints ie 2+ people can be coded in
-what other features are recommended?
 
Sounds like you have described a pillow...

Seriously, the last time I looked I couldn't find anything biometric that I felt was robust AND reliable. If you find one please let us know!
 
I think I'd rather have something with the electronic keypad that I could quickly punch in. Biometric sounds good, but I don't think I've seen too many of those that work consistently especially when you're trying to get your finger in the right spot in the dark.
 
Sounds like you have described a pillow...

Seriously, the last time I looked I couldn't find anything biometric that I felt was robust AND reliable. If you find one please let us know!
The recognition works flawlessly on my IPhone and IPad. So the technology is there.
 
You do not want biometric, they are all Chinese toys and total junk. Too much cheap electronics and poorly designed things between you and your firearm. Trust me on this, they are all terrible junk, I’ve researched it deeply in the past. Most of them can be jiggled open by a child in a matter of seconds (no joke).

What you want is this:
https://www.ftknox.com/product/original-pistol-box-wfront-sight-training-certificate-included/

It is VERY well made (10 gauge steel, made in the USA), very heavy (22lbs), and has a high quality lock that will never need batteries or let you down. It will always work and no child can easily open it.

You will understand why it is priced where it is when you receive it. I’ve recommended it to several poa folks that are just as happy with theirs as I am mine.
 
I like the mechanical simplex locks for this purpose. No battery to fail, easy to use in the dark, and since you can string together single- or multiple-button combinations (like playing a chord) there are a lot more combinations possible than you’d think from the simple 5 or 6 button keypad.

update: the box Jesse linked to above has exactly the kind of lock I described.
 
I failed to consider how the battery on an electronic version would probably be dead as someone is smashing my bedroom window in. Liking the mechanical locks.

I also did not mention in 'mission' that my main purpose is to prevent unapproved access (crazy visitors or their children), not so much anti-theft.

Here is a video comparing a few vastly different models:

 
The bigger question is do you actually need a safe type locking system? Certainly, if you have kids/or kids over, yes, lock them in a safe or put a trigger lock on it. Me personally, I want to be able to grab it when I need it, with as little fuss as possible.
 
I don't know why I did not think about the transition to a no kid situation. Do you 'under the pillow' folks just make it part of a checklist to move the gun to a locked status when, say, the toddler niece and nephew visit once a year? Or would it be best to 'train like you fight' and just leave it locked if there is ever a chance you need to put the weapon under lock?
 
For crazy visitors or neighbor kids, I'd have 2 layers. First a deadbolt on the bedroom door, and second the locked case for the pistol. Maybe overkill.
 
Handguns kept in the gun safe in our master bedroom with the other long guns. Enter code and open the door. Pump shotgun is kept loaded with short barrel installed. Both 9mm handguns have magazines loaded and ready to go. We have small children so there's no under the pillow/mattress weapons here. If we can't make it 10 steps away to the gun safe in an emergency, it was just our time to go.
 
Everyone’s situation is different, location, kids, crime statistics, locals laws, whatever. I’d compare the time to open the safe to what it would take to get the firearm, then load a nearby magazine, let the slide go home.

You could have the firearm hidden, unloaded, magazine hidden separately. Either could be in the back of the sock drawer, or underside of the bed, or even more discreet.

For theft protection, a small safe will be taken anyway, though you could cable it.
 
My DW is anti-gun leaning......buys into the misinformation and her liberal NE upbringing.
Anyway, when we got together....against my better judgement she insisted that they be locked up. Ultimately I bought this lockbox for my large revolver many years ago. It's a basic key lock, box and built more like a tank then anything else I've ever seen like it. Heavy and stout...and it has a secret puzzle way of getting into it without a key. By far the best built and best engineered pistol box I've ever seen, and very secure. Sadly, some years later when I went to buy a second one for my smaller CC handgun the company was no more and there were none to be found anyplace. So I ended up going with a Liberty Safe HD-100. Opted against the biometric locks. That was several years back though, maybe they're better now. The HD-100 is probably not perfect but I feel like it's pretty good.
The thing that concerns me most though, since i don't open the box regularly I fear that if I ever do need to get in I'll be rattled and won't remember the combination. That's where biometric makes a lot of sense.

Anyway, the locked up thing bothers me, but with kids in my house, and visiting kids coming over from time to time I do feel better about them being both hidden and locked.

I don't know why I did not think about the transition to a no kid situation. Do you 'under the pillow' folks just make it part of a checklist to move the gun to a locked status when, say, the toddler niece and nephew visit once a year? Or would it be best to 'train like you fight' and just leave it locked if there is ever a chance you need to put the weapon under lock?

I grew up around dad's guns, hunting, had my own bb gun at this point, cap guns, playing cowboys, playing army, etc.....but was a suburban kid. When I was a young kid, early elementary age, very young at this point
went to visit my grandparents who lived on a farm way out about 50 miles outside of the boonies limits in the mountains of Eastern KY. TV reception was non-existent and so us kids would sit around the living room at night listening to the old folks talk. I was sitting on the floor next to the sofa end table and spotted a revolver lying on the floor...probably a .38 as I think back on it....just right out in the wide open just centered under the table. No effort to hide it. Why would there be?...Grandparents didn't have young kids that don't know about guns living at home, or even visiting often. Well I guess I thought it was a cap gun and I had the great idea that I was going to wake up this boring party....so I picked up the gun and pointed it up to the ceiling. Was pulling the trigger when dad and grandpa both moved simultaneously about as fast as they probably ever had, yelling Nooooo!..stopped me just in time from punching a hole into that tin roof and busting some eardrums!

I think that my exposure to toy guns played a big role in that mistake...but at least even at that age I knew to point the muzzle in a safe direction.
 
The trouble with biometric is that I can always surprise you, cut off your finger and go open the safe without you, right?

A keypad is the best option, but finding anything that is silent will be a challenge.
 
I failed to consider how the battery on an electronic version would probably be dead as someone is smashing my bedroom window in. Liking the mechanical locks.
I have a battery powered safe with a "chord" type combination lock. The top has finger grooves and the combination is a user-defined series of button pushes. Easy to remember. I change the batteries annually, but they will last a lot longer. You get plenty of notice when they're getting low, and there's a backup key lock.
The bigger question is do you actually need a safe type locking system? Certainly, if you have kids/or kids over, yes, lock them in a safe or put a trigger lock on it. Me personally, I want to be able to grab it when I need it, with as little fuss as possible.
We have nieces, nephews, grandkids, etc. that may show up at random times... I'm not going to schedule their visits around when we can get the house ready. Besides, I lock up guns, ALL of them, for the same reason I don't do intersection takeoffs. You're fine almost all the time, but for that one exception I don't want to look really stupid in the NTSB (or police) report afterward.
I don't know why I did not think about the transition to a no kid situation. Do you 'under the pillow' folks just make it part of a checklist to move the gun to a locked status when, say, the toddler niece and nephew visit once a year? Or would it be best to 'train like you fight' and just leave it locked if there is ever a chance you need to put the weapon under lock?
See above.
 
The bigger question is do you actually need a safe type locking system? Certainly, if you have kids/or kids over, yes, lock them in a safe or put a trigger lock on it. Me personally, I want to be able to grab it when I need it, with as little fuss as possible.
My children are grown. So I keep mine in the upper dresser drawer. I decided for a revolver as they will work after ten years of sitting the drawer and there is a low skill set required to use it.
 
@Morgan3820

I don’t think the slider version will work in the truck console. They have other types that would though I believe. I’m not very familiar with their products other than the one I was given.
 
What do y'all do with younger kids? 6-12 ish? Old enough to be very curious but young enough that I'm not confident gun safety discussion is enough . . .
 
LOL @DaleB youtube would have you believe the safes are a mere nuisance in a child accessing it.

I can't see my kids taking a hammer or cinder block to it, but . . . There are some statistics around teen suicide and access so there's an ongoing discussion here. I guess there is only 1 true fail safe. Similar to flying.
 
Safes will keep the little ones out. The older ones, well, either you know that they’re safe, or you take more countermeasures, or you just DON’T KEEP GUNS ANYWHERE AN UNSTABLE MINOR CAN GET AT THEM. Sometimes that may require a measure of personal inconvenience or sacrifice; it’s what we do to keep kids from killing themselves, each other, and other people.

And always remember that any idiot can post any kind of BS on YouTube, and most idiots do.
 
What do y'all do with younger kids? 6-12 ish? Old enough to be very curious but young enough that I'm not confident gun safety discussion is enough . . .


That’s quite an age span but somewhere in there you teach them to shoot and how to handle a gun safely. I think I started @2-Bit Speed out with a BB gun somewhere around age 6 or 7, but he’d been going to the range with me prior to that. He was raised handling guns and I never had to worry too much about him.

When he was a toddler, though, guns were kept locked away.

In any case, long before age 12 they should learn about guns. It takes away some of the mystery and they don’t think of it as a big deal anymore.

We had this conversation over and over:

“What’s the first thing you do when you pick up a gun?”
“Open the action to ensure it’s unloaded.”
“What if you don’t know how to open the action?”
“Don’t pick it up!”


Lately he’s been teaching @SkyChaser gun handling and shooting.
 
I had a friend.

Okay, he actually was a friend. Somewhat. The other guys in the dorm hated him. I was probably the only friend he ever had in his life. He was a taxing friend. Actually, he was an *******.

But, I guess by default he was my *******. Well there was this time when he decided he absolutely needed to buy a Glock for home protection. Mind you this guy had no shooting experience. At all.

Against my better judgement, I accompanied him to the department store that still carried pistols at the time, and sort of nudged him through the hunter safety quiz, which was a requirement in California to buy a firearm. Well one of many. And he threw a world war III tirade when he found out that it was the last remaining Glock in the store and it was the display piece. Personally, if I was the salesman, I would have told him to shove it but regardless he got a discount on the thing and ten days later he walked out with it.

We did a range session. I don't like Glocks. I don't hate them, but I don't care for double action only automatics. I cut my teeth on DA/SA automatics when I did combat IPSC matches. Regardless, it shot nicely. The first shot I took was dead center to the middle of the head on the silhouette target. Of course he was all over the place, as you might expect.

I didn't feel good about facilitating his firearm experience. Okay I did feel good. I tried as best I could to instill the years of safety training I received starting from age like five or six or whatever culminating with room clearing drills with SMG's in the Army, focusing on muzzle awareness and target recognition, pretty much in that order. But I doubt I got very far.

I like shooting. I like being prepared for defense. But, it isn't for everyone. For those who it isn't for, it's probably for the best they stay out of it.
 
I had a friend.
...

I can relate to the entire story. Down to preferring DA/SA. Completely agree that someone that isn't interested shouldn't jump into it.

When I went through high school, taking a hunting safety course, which was really a firearm safety course, was a requirement to graduate. I think it's a good idea. It doesn't stick with everyone, but putting out the basics is a good plan.
 
I like guns. My dad taught me to shoot reinforced by boy scout camp safety training (10/22 rifles) followed by a handgun safety class as an adult and lots of research.

My wife is very concerned about our kids with guns in the house. With a moody now 15 year old son and an almost 13 and 8 year old daughters . . . I don't have one in the house (although I do have a handgun safe - it's empty).

I get range time but if I have to protect my family at home I'm on my own. Pepper spray, a bat and an escape plan.

If I ever have an altercation with a piece of paper standing stationary at 21 - 30 feet away, and I can set up and take a breath, I'll waste that sucker!!!!
 
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What do y'all do with younger kids? 6-12 ish? Old enough to be very curious but young enough that I'm not confident gun safety discussion is enough . . .

All guns in our home are in a large rifle safe. Keypad lock code that only the wife and I (and my father) know. I won't share that code with any of the kids until they're pretty much adult-age, even when the kids are well-versed in gun safety and operation. Not that I don't/won't trust my children, but emotions can run high and their friends can try to peer pressure them into letting them "check out" their dad's guns. There's nothing they need in that gun safe that can't wait until their mother or myself is at home. If there's a break-in/emergency at the house when we're away, their job is to get out of the house as quickly as possible.
 
Two safes in our house. The main one is a full fledged gun safe that uses a combination lock. My son and I know the combination, I doubt that my wife does. He uses the same combination for his safe (not in the same town).

The second one is on my nightstand. It is fastened down with internal screws. It uses a biometric lock (finger prints) or a combination lock. Either one will open it.

Given that our son is in his mid-40s, I'm not really worried about him (or our daughter who is 42). Our kids were exposed to guns from the time that they were very little (our daughter went to her first shoot when she was 2 weeks old). I'm not worried about them. It's the grandkids, ranging from starting her junior year in high school in the fall to twins entering 3rd grade in the fall. I have no idea what their level of training is, so all guns are under lock in one or the other safe. I don't have to worry about them that way. They aren't here all that often, but...

BTW, I'm an NRA certified RSO and a Benefactor Life Member of the NRA. I've been around guns since I was a kid (very young) and my wife's father used to own a sporting goods store, so she knows her way around guns, as well. They are a tool, one that demands respect.
 
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