.gif)
Where to Hide Your Guns in Your Home
The days of having fancy gun cabinets that proudly display your firearm collections are sadly a thing of the past. Between the increased targeting of gun owners by thieves and gun owners worrying about gun rights and wanting to keep their firearms more or less secure, more and more gun owners have taken to hiding their firearms in their homes.
Hidden and Secure vs Out of Sight but Accessible
There are a couple of things to consider when you are planning on hiding your firearms in your home.
First, do you want them hidden because you want them secure from thieves? Or second, do you want them out of sight but accessible to you in case of emergency?
If you are like many, you will be after a combination of the two with the main portion of your firearms locked safely away from thieves but having one (or several) placed about for instant access in case of emergency.
Gun Safes
This is the most common and if bolted down correctly, one of the most secure ways to keep your guns out of sight. These can be put in out-of-the-way places in your home and bolted to walls or floors to make them almost impossible for a common thief to abscond with your guns.
Your Current Furniture
There are many hiding places in your home and one of the simplest is in your furniture.
A holster can easily be mounted between cushions of stuffed chairs or couches. It is good to mount a holster since if the gun is just slid between or under cushions there is a chance with time it will move around and possibly fall down in far enough to make retrieving it difficult.
A holster can easily be mounted on the underside of most end tables, coffee tables, night stands, desks, bookshelves and any other place with a flat surface underneath something out of sight. These places are not the best if you have children crawling around, but other than that it is a great way to keep a handgun close by but out of sight.
You have probably watched cop shows with long guns hidden under couch cushions or under a mattress. This is pretty uncomfortable to anyone who has to sit on the couch or lay on the bed. A better idea is to put the longuns in the box springs or in the space under the springs of your couch.
Specialized Furniture
There are a few companies who are offering specialized furniture with firearm hides built into the design.
There are picture frames and clocks that hide a handgun, headboards for your bed that will hide handguns or long guns, and even coffee tables that can contain a whole arsenal.
Specialized Products
I mentioned mounting a holster in out of the way places earlier. There are companies that offer holsters specifically for mounting in various places.
There is also a handy mount that slides between mattress and box spring and holds a long gun right on the side of your bed. It is not a deep hide but if your bedspread covers it, it will not be right out in the open.
These companies also offer various products that allow you to disguise your firearm storage, such as book safes, Bible holsters (they look like a bible cover) and other creative ways to keep your guns handy but out of sight.
Walls and Ceilings
Another way to hide your guns is to start looking at your home to see how it is put together.
When I was a kid we moved into a house that had an unfinished basement that my dad finished into living area. He put paneling on the walls but mounted an out of the way panel on hinges so it swung out to reveal a space behind it. We stored our expensive firearms there. Something similar would be easy to do in most homes if you are the least bit handy.
Another great thing about that basement was we had access to the floor joist from the main floor above. When we installed the ceiling it created a great storage space between those floor joists.
Your home should have similar construction, so if you can get into this space you will see how it is perfect for firearm storage.
Drop ceilings with removable panels provide tons of storage space above your head that may not get searched.
Closets provide you with a great place to access your walls as a storage place. One of the best places is on the inside of the closet above the door. If you take off the sheetrock here you have a nice shelf, and while a thief may look up in your close he probably will miss looking up and backward at the same time.
Stairs
Stairs provide a nice rectangular box to store things in if you are careful and build a nice solid hide in them. If you decide to use your stairs as a hide, you must make sure your treads remain solid and don’t move or they will wear over time and be easily detected as a hiding spot.
Other Hiding Spots
There are so many other places to hide guns in your home.
-You can hang them in your closet between your clothes.
-Put a handgun in a pile of magazines next to your chair.
-Mount a long gun next to a window behind a curtain.
-Put a handgun in an old cereal box.
-Hollow out an old book and put a handgun in it.
-Get an old water heater, take out the guts through an opening in the back. Then put it in your garage with the hole against the wall. Run a couple fake pipes into the wall and you have a first rate hide.
Bait Guns
Another technique to consider is the use of bait guns.
This is where you purchase a nice inexpensive gun rack displayed prominently in your home with a couple cheap long guns, such as an old break open shotgun or two locked in the rack. This will give any thief the idea that you may have guns but they will concentrate on getting these old cheap ones out of the rack instead of looking for your real collection locked up or hidden elsewhere.
Hopefully these ideas will get your own creative juices flowing and you can use some combination of these ideas, along with a few of your own to secure your firearms in your home.
