What should you consider when purchasing a gun safe?
1. The door and the lock
Most inexperienced burglars will attempt to break the hinges on a safe if they are external. As observed they are unlikely to enter even if they break the hinges because the hinges do not lock or secure the door, provided it is a quality safe.
A more experienced safecracker will work on the door and particularly on the lock. In an attempt to open it they may try to pry the dial off the lock to knock the tumblers through the back plate or drill the lock’s tumblers. They may attempt to punch in the handle shaft.
They may attempt to drill the locks on the side and punch out the locking bolts.
So the quality of the door manufacturer and the locking mechanisms are very important. Often manufacturers use thicker steel on the door than elsewhere. The quality of the locking bolts is very important. Best is locking bolts on all four sides of the doors, side to side and top to bottom. I heard that Barska Quick Access Biometric Rifle Safe is the best biometric gun safe on the market till the date!
And if the bolts are activated by a combination lock then the wheel mounted on the outside of the door will be one of the first places to be attacked, commonly by drilling. It’s very important that the internal locking mechanism is protected against drilling. The best gun safes will have a hardened steel plate, or more than one, inside the door in front of the locking mechanism to protect it from drilling.
2.What type of lock should you choose?
There are basically 2 types of locks. Electronic and manual. There’s a range of different types of electronic locks including biometric scanners (fingerprint scanning) and keypads. Mechanical locks are your good old fashioned dial locks. There are positives and negatives to both. Electronic locks rely on a battery and if the batteries are not replaced will not work any longer. They are also more prone to breaking down. Mechanical locks, on the other hand, are reliable but much slower to use. Best biometric gun safe is still commonly available.
The traditional and time-honored lock that you have found on safes for generations is the rotary combination dial lock. This is the good old circular lock with the numbers around the outside of the dial which allows you to spin the dial to input the code.
For peace of mind, the age-old rotary combination is the most reliable and long-lasting. Whilst it is slower to operate it should give you years or decades of trouble-free use. Whilst the higher quality digital locks are generally reliable anything electronic can have its faults. They are quick to use, you just input the numbers into a keypad, or bang your finger on the recognition pad of a biometric lock, but are less reliable than traditional locks.
If you are choosing a rotary combination to choose a UL group 2 certified locks. Much newer to the market are biometric gun safes, or in other words rifle cabinets that use some form of biometric identification. Biometric refers to identification by way of a physical characteristic. The most common physical characteristic used on biometric safes is fingerprints. You preprogram your fingerprints into the safe and then have them scanned before opening. Or else the scanner will read your palm or hand or thumbprint.
Also Read : Edward Blocker's Gun Safe Buing Guide 2017
Whilst it may not seem entirely secure to simply open a safe by placing your hand on it the reality is that nobody has the same fingerprints or palm prints as you and this provides the measure of security required. Should an unauthorized user try to open the safe using their fingerprint then, often after a number of permitted tries, the safe will lock down for a period of time.
It’s usually quite possible for a number of users to be programmed. So if three people are all permitted to access the contents then the fingerprints, or thumbprints, of all three can be programmed. Some biometric safes even keep a computer record of every single opening attempt, and this can be accessed by the owner to see if there has been any unauthorized access attempts on the site.
It all seems simple and easy to use. However the technology is relatively new and we still favor the age-old and reliable technology rather than newer electronic technology which, in our view, has a higher risk of a fault.
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Natasha Kingsley © 2017