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Myth: My gun safe is so heavy, I don’t have to bolt it down.

This is one of the biggest myths.

Installing a gun safe without anchoring by bolting it down is like putting on a motorcycle helmet but not fastening the chin strap. The un-anchored gun safe looks like it’s doing something, but at the first sign of trouble it’s going to disappear.

Anchoring Makes the Gun Safe Harder to Steal

Given enough time and the right tools, there isn’t a safe made in the world that can’t be broken into. That’s why most thieves would rather take a safe or gun safe somewhere. That way they can take their time and make all the noise they want.

One of the most popular methods for attacking gun safes is just to steal the whole gun safe, as the example above where burglars made off with a 1500 lbs gun safe. With lighter gun safes, it can be easier to just take the whole safe then to break into it and have to carry out a dozen guns. These thieves stole 15 guns in a 500 lbs gun safe that wasn’t anchored in place.

If 2 or 3 guys got it into your house with a truck, 2 or 3 guys can get it out too. It may have taken the movers an hour or two to move it in, but most of that time was spent making sure they didn’t scratch your walls, floors, or the safe. Burglars do not care about destroying your house to avoid going to jail, or even just for the fun of it.

You may be right that it’s almost impossible to get the safe down your complicated stairway without the proper equipment, but that doesn’t mean burglars won’t throw it down the stairs and through a wall trying. Career criminals are often very strong. They may have spent years on the street fighting and in prison lifting weights. They may be strong enough to just drag it out and destroy your floors.

Most people assume it’s impossible to move a gun safe because they don’t think like thieves. Burglars usually adapt things they find around a home for all kinds of purposes. If they need to get a gun safe across a floor they may throw it on a big blanket and drag it out. Or they put it on something that will roll like pipes, golf balls, billiard balls, broken broom sticks, or the dolly in your own garage, and roll it out.

If they know you have a gun safe ahead of time they may even bring some of those tools. The majority of thieves don’t actually carry around tools to break into houses. The tools can incriminate them if they’re caught with them and no justification. But if they are caught with a bag of golf balls or some sections of electrical conduit, a police officer can’t really charge them with “possession of burglary tools”.

Burglars can also use their vehicles in creative ways. In this example, thieves stole two gun safes out of a house, putting one weighing 1100 lbs on the roof of their car. They used the owner’s son’s scooter to wheel the gun safe out the garage, but were interrupted by a neighbor as they tied it down using the straps they had brought with them.

Burglars can also pull a gun safe out of your garage with a tow strap and throw it in the back of a truck. Thieves have ripped heavy commercial TL-15 safes holding narcotics out of drug stores with stolen tow trucks.

When there’s something worth stealing burglars can be very resourceful, so you have to think like a thief to prevent burglary. Bolting down this cheap gun safe kept burglars from stealing it.

Anchoring Makes a Gun Safe Harder to Pry Open

Even if the burglars don’t try to take the safe, by not bolting down your gun safe you just made their life so much easier!

Their first move will be to push the safe over. It is difficult to get enough leverage to attack a safe door with a pry bar when it’s standing up. When it’s lying down, they can use all of their body weight to jump up and down on any lever they have available. Most of the pried-open gun safes shown in this article were found lying down after the break-in.

The UL 1037 Residential Security Container test is only performed with a gun safe “secured in its intended position”. A UL RSC tester may have been unable to jump up and down on his pry bar because the test rules assumed it was standing up. If you don’t bolt yours down, you may find that you don’t have the protection you thought against small hand tools.

Anchoring Makes a Gun Safe Harder to Hack, Saw, or Hammer Open

The door of any safe is the thickest part. By pushing the safe over, they can attack any of the other five sides which are much thinner.

It also may be difficult to attack your vertical gun safe with an ax, sledgehammer, or other brute force tool. Do you ever split wood horizontally? Of course not, it’s silly and dangerous. You put the wood on the ground and swing down on it, letting the weight of the splitting ax/maul help do the work.

With the gun safe pushed over, they can position it however they want and swing down on it with all their might and weight.

Anchoring is Necessary for Safety

Another reason your gun safe needs to be bolted down is for safety. Some safes, especially wide and shallow ones, will tip over if not bolted down. The door of a gun safe is 30 to 50% of its weight. When swung open, it can cause the gun safe to topple over. You don’t want a metal box weighing hundreds of pounds falling on you and/or slamming your hands and feet in the closing door. The best case is it only damages your floor and guns.

It’s penny-wise, pound-foolish to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a gun safe because you’re afraid of burglars, but not spend another $40 to secure the thing.

If you can’t bolt it down, I have some other ideas about how to build a gun safe anchor or improvise one.