This story begins in the early 1980s, when developer Bill Michas began construction of a Whippany strip mall by first building a 3,000-square-foot underground vault for a safe deposit box business.

The business never took off, but the vault found another use. Today, people eating breakfast at The Original Pancake House or taking martial arts classes at AMA Fight Club, at the Pine Plaza Shopping Center, have no idea a weapons cache is buried deep beneath their feet.

Hand guns. Long guns. Legal guns. Guns once legal, now illegal due to new laws. Collectible guns. Hand-me-down guns, worth nothing but sentimental value.

Guns from people facing domestic violence charges, temporary restraining orders or other legal trouble. Guns from deployed soldiers. Or from people with kids in the house. Or from people trying to sell their houses.

That vault - encased in 3 feet of concrete on all sides, with steel-plated floors, ceilings and walls, and a 10,000-pound dynamite-proof door - now holds hundreds of guns legally transferred by their owners to a unique business called "Gunsitters."

While there are many gun businesses that store firearms, Gunsitters has found a niche in these legal transfers.

Someone facing a gun seizure by police can legally and temporarily transfer ownership to Gunsitters until their problems clear. If their problems don't clear and they lose the right to own guns, Gunsitters sells the guns for them.

The owners transfer the guns to the company for $1 a piece and buy them back at the same price. If the guns must be sold, Gunsitters takes a 20 percent commission.

"I don't know of any business like it, anywhere," said Frank Pisano, a Montville attorney specializing in New Jersey firearms laws.

One reason, Pisano said, is that Gunsitters offers a service that would only work in New Jersey, or other states with "draconian" firearms regulations.

"It's easier, and there's less risk, for a lawful firearm owner to transfer his or her collection to a licensed dealer than attempt to navigate the complex and time-consuming laws regulating person-to-person transfers in New Jersey."

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It's against the law in the Garden State to relinquish control of your firearms to another person, unless that person has all the necessary permits to take possession.

And why would someone want to relinquish control?

There are almost as many reasons as there are types of guns.

"Realtors won't show a house with guns in it," said Ross Osias, of Lincoln Park, a founding partner of Gunsitters. "So you have to move your guns."

"If a soldier is being deployed, he can't leave his guns on the base, so what does he do?" said Vince Damiano, of Hampton, a combat-wounded veteran, who runs a business called "Weapons Guard" in conjunction with Gunsitters for military people to store or temporarily transfer ownership of guns.

"We have one client, a kid in his 20s, whose parents won't let him keep the gun in the house," Osias said.

"Another client is a retired police officer whose son got in trouble, so he can no longer keep his guns in the house," he said. "We had another guy who was moving to California and just wanted to divest himself of his collection."

Storage fees range from $35 a month for a drawer that can hold five handguns, to $200 a month for a cage that holds a total of 45 rifles and handguns.

Much of Gunsitters business comes from people facing domestic charges. In New Jersey, the law requires guns be seized in the case of any domestic complaint, including verbal harassment.

"Our business is good for everybody involved," said Osias. "It stops the gun owner from getting his legal property seized. It also eliminates the threat for a potential victim in a hostile situation. And it helps police, so they don't have to record and store these guns, or go through the expense of destroying them."

State police statistics from 2012 (the last year available) show there were 65,060 domestic complaints in New Jersey. Domestic violence homicides numbered 38 - 26 women and 12 men. In 2011, according to the FBI, 37 New Jersey women were killed in domestic incidents.

The New Jersey laws for gun seizure cast a very wide net in domestic incidents. A gun collector in Cumberland County had his weapons seized after his wife was accused of abusing her 81-year-old father. Because the husband and wife lived together, his guns were taken, even though he wasn't named in the complaint.

Osias and his partner, Eric Rebels of Kinnelon, a former Department of Defense police officer, weren't always in the gun business.

Their first company, which still exists, is called Data Safe and the vault remains home to data cartridges.

But as technology advanced, information discs and hard drives shrunk, and the vault ended up with vast amounts of rentable space.

"We asked ourselves, 'What can we put in all this space?' " Rebels said.

The answer came three years ago, when a friend of Rebels, who is police officer, was facing a domestic harassment charge.

"He knew they would seize his guns and he would probably never get them back," Rebels said.

Rebels and Osias hired gun-rights experts and worked with law enforcement agencies to create a legal temporary and permanent transfer business.

"We made sure we were in compliance with AG (state attorney general), the state police and the ATF (federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives)," Osias said.

Osias and Rebels have a third company on site called F.S.S., which offers gun safety training and sells firearms. In the showroom display cases are guns that some Gunsitter clients aren't ever getting back.

"This way, at least they get money for their guns," Rebels said. "If police seize them (and eventually destroy them), it's a total loss."

Mark Di Ionno may be reached at mdiionno@starledger.com. Follow The Star-Ledger on Twitter @StarLedger and find us on Facebook.