Long Term Gun Storage

I’ve got guns stored throughout my house. These are my “home defense” guns so they’re fully loaded with a round in the chamber. However, because I have a one-year-old that is like Godzilla and walks around my house taking things off shelves and destroying them, all of my home defense guns are locked in a rapid opening safe. (I use the Gun Vault and Stack-On brands.)

But I also have guns that I don’t use for home defense purposes, such as some handguns, rifles, and shotguns, and just because I don’t have them loaded with a round in the chamber, doesn’t mean they’re not locked up. The fact is, even if I didn’t have a mini-Godzilla running around my house I still believe in having every gun you own locked up in one way or another.

The simplest route to take for your “non-home defense” guns would be to put a trigger lock on them.

Master Lock and Remington are a few of the companies that make trigger locks and once the locks are on you could throw the guns in a box in your closest. (This isn’t a method I prefer, but to each their own.)

Another route to take for guns that you don’t use very often is to lock them in the plastic gun case they came in. Throw a padlock on the case and you’re all set.

A more secure option is one of the larger gun safes by Liberty, Cannon, or Browning.

If you were ever to have a break-in and you weren’t home, the thieves could easily run off with your guns with just the trigger lock or in the plastic gun case. (This happened to a friend of mine.) However, if you’re using one of the large safes and it’s bolted to the ground it would take them a heck of a long time to make off with it.

Depending on how long you’re going to store your guns in these large safes I would thoroughly clean them before I put them away and make sure to wipe off your fingerprints using a silicone gun cloth before you put them away. You may want to go as far as adding some desiccant inside the safe too.

If you’re going to put your guns in these safes and not touch them for more than a year you may also want to get a gun storage bag such as the ZCORR storage bags. And if you’re burying your guns in a PVC pipe in your back yard for the end of the world then I would definitely get a gun storage bag and throw in some desiccant.

One final note: For my own guns that I don’t use for home defense and that I store longer term, I store these unloaded - both the gun and the magazines. Guns like my Ruger Mark III are not part of my home defense plan, plus the safe takes a long time to open, so I choose to keep them unloaded. But however you choose to keep your guns stored is up to you.