Thinking through whether you should bolt your gun safe to your floor is an important aspect of gun safe ownership to think about. It is not only a safety concern due to theft, but also a concern for your family and pets within your home. In this article, we are going to talk through why you should bolt your gun safe to the floor, and even a few reasons you might want to consider not bolting it down.
Bolting your gun safe to the ground is as important as locking your safe every time you use it. Bolting it down will keep your gun safe from being removed from the home during an attempted theft, it makes it considerably more difficult to pry the safe open, and it keeps the safe from falling forward onto someone in your home.
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1. Bolting your safe down makes it difficult to carry away
One of the easiest ways to break into a gun safe is to remove it from the home and gain access away from the home. This takes the time pressure off of the thieves and allows them to use larger tools that wouldn’t be able to be used in a home that is not theirs. You will be surprised to find that even the heaviest of gun safes are susceptible to this.
Bolting your gun safe to the ground makes this considerably more difficult to do, and makes it so that they will have to stay inside of your home (and be more likely to get caught) to gain access to your safe. The idea behind this is, that they will move on from the safe, and leave your most valuable and dangerous items alone.
2. Prying Open The Safe is More Difficult
If a thief isn’t able to get a safe out of a house, laying it on its back by tipping it over, is the best way to get leverage to pry open a gun safe, and is something you should help avoid. The best way to keep that from happening again is to anchor the safe to the floor so that they are unable to tip it over.
3. Heavy doors make safes top-heavy
Ever wondered why gun safes are so deep, making it more difficult to reach the firearms in the back of the safe? This is because the door of the safe is so incredibly heavy, that the safe needs added depth to counterbalance the door when it is open. While the added weight and depth of the safe help with this, it should give you a good reminder that the safe can still tip over.
Anchoring down a gun safe with a good anchor bolt kit will help in making sure that you, your family, or your pet don’t end up with a box of metal on top of them. Doing this one simple thing can make all of the difference.
Why you shouldn’t bolt your safe to the floor
1. Apartment or Dorm
Many apartments and dorms out there prefer that you don’t modify the walls, or floors of your home. Because of this, that makes bolting the safe down to the floor is a non-starter. Unfortunately, that leaves your safe susceptible to the issues we discussed earlier in the article.
If this sounds like you, you might want to consider alternative ways to keep your safe from being able to be moved around. The best way to do this would be to connect it to something around your place via a cable.
For smaller safes, something like a good tie down cable would work wonders. Unfortunately for larger safes, there aren’t too many options, and adding weight to the safe to deter a thief is going to be your best bet.
2. You need to be able to move it regularly
Whether you are military, someone that follows your work throughout the country, or you just don’t enjoy staying in one place very long, bolting your safe down to the floor may not be a great option for you.
You should most definitely weigh your risks against not bolting it to the floor though, as they may outweigh the pain of causing the damage and needing to repair it. This is especially true with carpeting, but there are ways around that.
3. It doesn’t have bolt holes in the bottom
Are you looking at, or currently have a safe that doesn’t have bolt holes in the bottom? Most people would want to go ahead and drill holes in the bottom to bolt the safe to the floor. Not so fast! Make sure to call the manufacturer to verify that you can do that without voiding your warranty.
That said, there are gun safes like the biometric Konig Home found on my list here that have small divet in the bottom of the safe to allow for drilling if you so choose to.
Conclusion
Bolting your gun safe to the floor (or desk and nightstand), whether it be a long gun safe, or a pistol safe is an important thing to think through. Generally speaking, the benefits of added security will outweigh any reasons you might be considering for not bolting it down.
The primary reason you want to bolt your safe to the ground will be to keep it from being carried away out of your home, however not helping the thieves pry it open and of course, it not tipping over in day-to-day usage are also big upsides.
