If you’ve decided you want to protect yourself and your family and exercise that good old second amendment right to bear arms and you’ve gone out and bought yourself a nice big gun.

Where are you going to put that gun once you’ve brought it home? You can’t just leave it lying about the house like your lazy dog, your kid is bound to find it, pick it up, and shoot himself. Sounds like you need to start thinking about buying gun safes.

How Gun Safes Work?

Gun safes are incredibly useful for safely storing your firearms. There are all different types of gun safes to choose from and all of them have different sizes, shapes, utilities, functions, and prices. You’re going to want to choose wisely and pick the best gun safe that is just right for you or you might end up having some severe buyer’s remorse.

Here are some questions you should be thinking about before you run off and buy yourself a brand new gun safe to store your guns in:

What Kind of Gun Do You Own?

This is the most important question of all. The type of gun you own whether it be a hand gun, rifle, shot gun, chain gun, what-have-you, is going to determine the type of gun safe you need to buy.

A Gunvault handgun safe built to store hand guns isn’t going to have the proper components that a gun safe built for storing rifles is going to have, hell they probably aren’t even going to be the same size!

If this is your first gun but you know it won’t be your last (yes, I know its fun to collect more than one type of gun sometimes) you’ll also want to think into the future. Are you going to collect all different varieties of firearms? Do you think all of your guns will be the same size pretty much?

If you don’t mind spending the money and have the space to store multiple gun safes in your house this probably isn’t such a big deal. Just buy one now and buy another one later when you get a new gun.

However, most people don’t have that kind of spending money and they want to just have one gun safe. Tailor the gun safe to the type of gun you own and the guns you will own in the future. If you want a variety of firearms get a bigger gun safe so you can accommodate all sorts of styles. If you’re just going to collect hand guns or antique pistols or something, get a small safe and be done with it.

Where Will You Put Your Gun Safe?

This is another tricky question. Before you rush off and by the biggest damn gun safe on the market you might want to consider where you’re going to put it. If you’re living in a small condo or apartment somewhere in the city, you might not have much room for a huge gun safe.
Personally, I keep my gun safe in my basement. There’s lots of storage space down there and I own a few big guns so I like to have a big gun safe for them. I keep it tucked away in a corner so its not obstructing any movement and the guns will be pretty easy to access if I need them in a pinch.

I know some guys who keep their gun safes in their office and one lucky guy’s wife even lets him keep his gun safe right in the living room by the fireplace. If you put it by the fireplace though make sure to have a fireproof gun safe. Not everyone can be that lucky, so make sure you know where you’re going to put the gun safe before you buy it.

How Easily Do You Want Access to Your Gun Safe?

If you’re in a dangerous neighborhood or just paranoid about being robbed or murdered, you’ll need to have a gun safe that you can open quickly. You don’t want to have someone leap through your window only to discover that you can’t open the lock and get your gun out fast enough before he shoots you in the head.

You can purchase gun safes with all different kinds of locks on them. A biometric gun safe, also known as a fingerprint gun safe, has a fingerprint detection lock on it. I have a digital lock on mine so I just punch the numbers (just four digits) and it opens up. Most cheap gun safes have decent digital locks and I find that the digital locks are good enough to keep my kids out and if anyone threatens my family I’ll be able to grab my gun. You never can tell when the zombie invasion might be.

There are a hundred different brands of gun safes out there to choose from and each of them have unique qualities and flaws that you should take into account when buying your first gun safe. Take a look at browning gun safes for that elite and expensive variety, stack on gun safes are great for the middle ground, and homak gun safes are more of the cheaper ones. Just browse around and see what kind of safe you can afford.

Anyway, once you’ve decided what kind of guns you’re going to store in the safe, how big those guns will be, where you’re going to put your gun safe once you have it and what kind of lock you’d like on it, its time to go out and buy yourself a gun safe. Figure out what brands are the best and how much you might have to spend, read gun safe reviews, maybe you’ll decide you want to splurge and even get a wall gun safe.

If you think that owning a gun is an imperative case for you especially having it around the house, then the most important thing you should know is how to properly keep your gun at a safe location. This is especially vital if you have children roaming around the house. Read our guidance how to store guns safely in your home.

Keeping Guns Away from Children

An integral part of gun ownership is gun safety. The methods listed below are recommended by National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). Besides the obvious proper and highly secured storage rule, there are several more actions gun owners should take to ensure the ultimate safety for their family. The tips how to store guns safely in your home include:

• Keep the firearms muzzles pointed in a safe direction, meaning that if there is ever an accidental discharge, it won’t injure anybody.
• Keep your finger off the trigger unless you are 100% sure you are about to shoot. A proper way of handling a gun is to rest the finger outside the trigger guard or alongside the firearm. Only touch the trigger when you are ready to shoot.
• Always unload guns when they are not in use. Always point your firearm away from people when you take it out of the storage or put it back in and make sure it’s always unloaded.
• Make sure you know how the firearm you own operates. Make sure you understand what’s on the manual and how to safely close or open the action of the gun. Make sure you know how to remove any ammunition safely from the gun as well as its magazine.
• Store firearms in a locked safe, cabinet, gun safes or any storage that children do not have or cannot access and basically everyone else too without your permission.
• Make sure the ammunition is stored in a separate and safe place from the firearms.
• Make sure you use a gun locking device that makes the guns unable to be operated when they are not needed. A gun lock is your must-have extra safety precaution and don’t see it as a substitute for safe storage.
• Make sure every young person in the house know and understand the safety guidelines concerning guns. You can make them sign the Project ChildSafe Pledge for Young People which is a reminder for them to not touch any random firearm they find in the house or the neighborhood and to inform an adult.
• Make sure to always unload, clean and then place your guns in their secure storage right away after coming back from a day at a range or a hunting trip.
• The last but not least, educate everyone in the house about firearms safety. You can visit Project ChildSafe Website to get a thorough information regarding safety and to find out where you can get firearm safety kit for free in the area you live in.

One of the quick and safest place to store your firearms in biometric safes where they can store one gun and can only be opened by you because they require a fingerprint confirmation. You can also consult with local police for advice about gun locks and safe storage. And the last but certainly not least, you should never leave your gun unattended even for a second when you are cleaning or simply handling a firearm. Even if there is no presence of children in the house, doing the methods how to store guns safely in your home mentioned above are still necessary for you never what’s going to happen in the future. Bottom line, how and where you store your guns is the core key.